Jarvis Cocker to Score Next Harry Potter Film?

John Williams must be rolling over in his grave. After scoring the first three Harry Potter flicks, the man responsible for the most annoyingly hummable movie scores of the last 25 years has been ousted in favor of... Jarvis! In a curious move, former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker will reportedly write most of the music for the fourth Potter film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, select the remainder of it, and may even make a cameo appearance in the movie. According to an article in UK paper The Sun, Cocker was selected by new Potter director Mike Newell in an effort to appeal to a different audience... as well as, we presume, more Mojo writers.

A source at Warner Bros. told The Sun, "[Cocker] is a very talented musician who is a big fan of movies and knows exactly how they work. You may just think Jarvis is the bloke in specs who fronted Pulp but he is a man with many hidden depths." For instance? Motherfucker can juggle. Cocker is apparently considering writing the score under the name of his alter ego, Darren Spooner, just, y'know, for kicks. Plus, attaching a name like Jarvis Cocker to the project could really detract the focus from the story of a crime-fighting wizard kid. Or whatever it is these things are about.

There is, naturally, the real possibility that this all could be bullshit. The Sun's story directly contradicts an October report by MTV.com that had Franz Ferdinand scoring and starring in the very same film. In fact, that article even had a quote from singer Alex Kapranos, who broke it down thusly: "We've been asked to write some music. There's a section where there's a band of ugly sisters playing and I think, well... some members of Franz Ferdinand may be the ugly sisters in the band." He continued, "There's an excitement and innocence about those films. I like how there's good and evil, and that's a clarity which is quite refreshing."

Clearly, someone ain't telling the truth. And to make matters worse, a third source, the highly reputable John Williams Fan Network, announced previously that composer Patrick Doyle had been selected to score the flick. However, the answer to all this nonsense may at least partly lay in an aside in the Sun article that mentions that Cocker has picked Franz Ferdinand to write a track for the film. But one thing is pretty clear, whoever winds up writing the soundtrack: John Williams is out on his magical ass.