The composer behind Oppenheimer also produced This Is America
Ludwig Göransson has won three Oscars for film scores, including Oppenheimer and Black Panther, plus Emmys for The Mandalorian. The same Swede produced Childish Gambino's This Is America and co-wrote a funk album with him. It all traces back to a film school friendship and a job on a TV sitcom.
Göransson was born on 1 September 1984 in Linköping, Sweden, to a Polish-born florist and a Swedish guitar teacher, and was named after Beethoven. He studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, then moved to Los Angeles in 2007 to join the University of Southern California's scoring programme for film and television. There he met a film student named Ryan Coogler and scored his short film Locks in 2009.
After assisting the composer Theodore Shapiro, he landed his first big break in 2009 scoring the NBC comedy Community, followed by New Girl. On the Community set, actor Donald Glover asked him to help with a side project called Childish Gambino. The partnership produced four albums, including Awaken, My Love!, inspired by Parliament-Funkadelic and 1970s black power music, on which Göransson produced and co-wrote every track. Their 2018 single This Is America won the Grammys for Record and Song of the Year. Other clients have included artists as varied as Adele, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar and Haim, helping shape the band's early sound.
His screen career grew alongside Coogler's; Göransson has scored every one of the director's films. Black Panther won him his first Oscar for original score in 2018, and Coogler's horror film Sinners brought a third in 2025. Between them came Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer in 2023. He was also nominated for best original song for Lift Me Up, sung by Rihanna in the Wakanda Forever sequel.
Television pulled him into drama too: his score for Disney+'s The Mandalorian earned two Emmys, and he wrote the main theme for The Book of Boba Fett. Other work includes Pixar's Turning Red and the 2026 film The Mandalorian and Grogu. His award tally now includes six Grammys, two BAFTAs and two Golden Globes.
Source: Ludwig Göransson
