A bit bleary after answering questions at an earlier press conference, he brightened when asked how much space Mitchell and DreamWorks gave him to bring his ideas to the soundtrack. “Doing music and doing film, I’ve always said it would be amazing to do the music in a film,” Timberlake said, his long legs tucked beneath him as he sat in a Beverly Hills hotel suite.

Known more recently for his chart-topping work with Taylor Swift and the Weeknd, Martin and his team of writers and producers joined Timberlake to create four songs for “Trolls,” most notably “ Can’t Stop the Feeling,” a catchy, ebullient disco jam released in May that’s become the biggest-selling song of 2016, according to Nielsen Music, with more than 2 million downloads.īut they also made weirder stuff, such as “Hair Up,” the movie’s opening number that interpolates Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” and a throbbing, percussive duet between Timberlake and Gwen Stefani called “What U Workin’ With?” “The whole thing, you’re just like, ‘What is going on right now?’”

“It’s kind of psychedelic, huh?” Timberlake, 35, asked the other day with visible pride. 4, is a deeply trippy experience full of swirling colors, otherworldly voices - and songs that can threaten to overwhelm your sonic and emotional receptors. Far from a straightforward kids’ picture, “Trolls,” due in theaters Nov. Longtime fans of Justin Timberlake were probably surprised earlier this year when the singer and actor announced he’d signed on to oversee the music for “Trolls,” the new DreamWorks Animation movie inspired by the fuzzy-headed dolls popular in the early 1990s.Īfter all, this former member of the boy band ’N Sync has spent much of the last decade trying hard to shake his teenybopper past, with songs like the heavy-breathing “SexyBack” and grown-up film roles in “The Social Network” and “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Now here he is happily stepping back into the realm of the branded lunch box.īut if Timberlake’s decision caught some off-guard, they’re in for an even bigger shock when they see the movie itself.

Trolls movie get back up again