Tony Gilroy on leaving the politics of ‘Andor’ behind for his 9-composer music drama ‘Behemoth!’

NEW YORK (AP) — Long before Tony Gilroy wrote “The Bourne Identity,” made “Michael Clayton” or created “Andor,” he wanted to be a musician. After playing guitar in a string of bands, Gilroy came to Los Angeles hoping to become a studio musician. A session with some real players quickly disabused him of that notion.

But once Gilroy entered filmmaking, his fascination with the scoring process, and the orchestras that record them, kept growing. By the time Gilroy was overseeing the scoring of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” at the famed Gary Martin Soundstage on the Sony Pictures lot, something started percolating. “Those scoring sessions were incredibly intense,” said Gilroy.

I just sat there going: There has to be a movie here.” Now there is. Gilroy’s “Behemoth!” premiered last weekend at the centerpiece of the New York Film Festival. Gilroy’s first film since the Star Wars series “Andor” concluded its acclaimed two-season run, “Behemoth!” was one of the festival’s most keenly awaited movies.

In the film, which Searchlight Pictures will release Dec. 4, Pedro Pascal stars as a perpetually on-the-run cellist and former prodigy who returns to Los Angeles to score films. His life is as messy as his playing is flawless.

“Behemoth!” is a rigorously scripted, time-shifting character study in the mold of Gilroy’s 2007 masterpiece, “Michael Clayton,” and a resonant ode to the art of movie scoring. In an experimental gambit, Gilroy cast nine composers — dubbed the Behemoth! Collective — to fill the movie with music.

“I kinda had a vague idea of how I could gather enough musicians quickly before the authorities got involved,” a chuckling Gilroy said during an interview at Lincoln Center. “We just said, ‘OK, everybody’s going to get exactly the same amount of money. … We made a basic, early manifesto for what the rules would be.