Michael Giacchino and Kevin Feige on the New Marvel Studios Special Presentation Intro

“It's an homage, and it's a love letter to those things, when they used to take the time to say, hey, we're giving you something different here."

There’s some new Marvel fanfare in town. At the beginning of Werewolf by Night — the first-ever Marvel Studios Special Presentation arriving on Disney+ today — an original score kicks off the feature, clearly indicating that this is something exciting and different we haven’t seen before.

The Marvel Studios Special Presentation fanfare was actually composed by Michael Giacchino, who already has a long list of Marvel Studios score credits to his name, from Doctor Strange to Thor: Love and Thunder, in addition to all three recent Spider-Man movies. For the first time ever, he also steps into the director’s chair to helm Werewolf by Night.

Making specific “holiday specials” was always an idea for Marvel Studios when Disney+ entered the mix, and as Marvel Studios president and producer Kevin Feige explains, with the new special presentation treatment, “We wanted to tap into the nostalgia we had as kids when the weekly scheduled entertainment would be interrupted for a show like ‘It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!’ or ‘Frosty the Snowman’ or ‘Rudolph.’”

“When Kevin and I were talking about this, both of us were massive fans of when you were a kid, and one of those special logos came up, and you could not wait [to watch],” Giacchino says. “If you were in the other room, and you heard that on television, you ran to the TV room.”

The idea to pay tribute to this sentimentality from television yesteryear came about by creating not only a new logo but also a new sound to kick it off.

“Many of the networks had their own logos that indicated a special was about to begin, and we thought it would be fun to do an homage to those,” Feige continues. “Michael loved the idea and said he'd write the music.”

“We wanted to do something similar,” Giacchino adds. “It's an homage, and it's a love letter to those things, when they used to take the time to say, hey, we're giving you something different here. This is something unique. It's not something you're going to see every week, like all the other programming on our network. It's going to be different.

Feige and Giacchino spent time reminiscing over memories of watching these specials on TV, with Giacchino referencing the “excitement” around these extra-special episodes.

“We were like, remember the bongos and all of that stuff you would hear in the beginning, and it was sort of this energetic burst of newness. We were just like, let's do that. So we did. We just went for it.”

Though brief, the special presentation music is an absolute bop, and one sure to elicit that same level of excitement when it arrives on Disney+ now and with future special presentations to come. It’s that kind of longevity that really excites Giacchino about what he’s created, considering it will live in special presentations to come, well after Werewolf by Night.

“Any time you do something that lives on beyond just what you did it for, that's a really good feeling,” he continues. “I mean, if I'm at Disneyland or something with the kids and I hear Up or Inside Out or anything or The Incredibles, it still blows my mind that is happening. That's the highest tribute, in a way, the fact that something will live on beyond the element for which it was created. I love that.”