Williams is composing the score for the seventh instalment of the franchise, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which is in cinemas in December.
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Esteemed composer John Williams will receive the 44th AFI Life Achievement Award, America’s highest honor for a career in film, the American Film Institute Board of Trustees announced Thursday.
Williams, 83, has composed music for more than 150 movies and 200 television shows over seven decades.
Williams, who is a five-time Oscar victor, will receive the 44th AFI Lifetime Achievement Award on June 9, 2016.
“John Williams has written the soundtrack to our lives”, Howard Stringer, chair of the AFI Board of Trustees, said in a statement. The event will return for its fourth year with Turner Broadcasting in late June 2016, followed by an encore presentation on its sister network, Turner Classic Movies.
Other recipients of the AFI lifetime achievement award include Spielberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda and most recently, comedic actor Steve Martin.
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Three of Williams’ scores landed on AFI’s list of the 25 greatest American film scores of all time, including the 1977 “Star Wars” soundtrack at number one. As Deadline notes, Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Bridge Of Spies will be his first film in 41 years without a score by Williams (he had to back out due to “a minor health issue”), though the two will be back together for Spielberg’s adaptation of The BFG. He’s earned a total of 49 Oscar nominations, making him the second-most-nominated individual after Walt Disney. And he still has a few more Star Wars scores in the works.
