Brian Tyler attended UCLA and Harvard before embarking on a successful career in music. A self-taught musician proficient on myriad instruments including drums, piano, guitar, bass, cello, percussion, synthesizer, charango, and bouzouki, Tyler began scoring films shortly after graduation from Harvard. His early scores for films like 1997's Bartender and the next year's Six String Samurai helped him land his first big break with the 2001 Bill Paxton-directed thriller Frailty.
Tyler soon became one of the most in-demand film composers in the business, working on television series like The Education of Max Bickford (2001-2002) and a pair of episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2003 in addition to movies like 2003's The Hunted and Timeline. He scored the 2005 action hit Constantine with Klaus Badelt, followed by his debut in The Fast and the Furious series, 2006's Tokyo Drift. Work in other popular franchises came at a steady rate, and included Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), Rambo (2008), and Final Destination (2009). Tyler ventured into video game scoring in 2010 with Lego Universe, composing music for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Far Cry 3, and Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, among other titles over the next three years. During that time, he also provided music for the TV series Terra Nova (2011) and Transformers Prime (2010-2013).
Back on the big screen, in 2013, Tyler joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, scoring both Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World. In addition to his scores for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Expendables 3, the year 2014 brought the hit song "Shell Shocked," which Tyler co-wrote and produced with Wiz Kalifah, Kill the Noise, Ty Dolla $ign, Juicy J, and Moxie using the pseudonym Madsonik. His fourth contribution to The Fast and the Furious series, Furious 7, and his third for Marvel, Avengers: Age of Ultron, both followed in April 2015. Tyler's energized compositions could be heard in movies including Power Rangers, Alex Kurtzman's The Mummy, and The Fate of the Furious in 2017. That year, the TV series Sleepy Hollow aired its final episode; Tyler and Robert Lydecker composed music for the show's entire four-season run, including its Emmy-nominated theme song.
Though Tyler had ventured into chamber music and other more wistful material earlier in his career, he surprised fans with the playful and romantic Crazy Rich Asians in 2018. That year also saw the release of the video game F1 2018, the tenth installment of the Formula One series and first to feature Tyler's music. He joined the crew of the TV series Formula 1 in 2018 as well. Tyler closed out the 2010s with work on the TV show Swamp Thing, continued contributions to TV's Hawaii Five-O, and 2019 films including the comedy What Men Want and the psychological horror film Escape Room.
In April 2020, Hawaii Five-O ended its ten-season run, and Tyler scored the live-action Disney musical drama Clouds. He then scored several high-profile franchise installments, including 2021's F9 and 2022's Scream. Also in 2022, he scored the animated hit Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. ~ Marcy Donelson & James Christopher Monger, Rovi