On October 9, 2012, WaterTower Music released the Argo: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack at all digital retailers. The original music was composed by four-time Academy-Award nominee Alexandre Desplat.
The film's director Ben Affleck said, "We needed to find a theme that we would use throughout-obviously different instrumentation and tempo, but still the same piece of music." He turned to composer Alexandre Desplat. "Desplat was amazing at crafting an atypical score, incorporating uncommon instruments, many Middle Eastern in origin. It doesn't feel too literal or cliché, but he created a sound that instantly puts you in that place."
A four-time Academy Award nominee, Desplat received his most recent Oscar nod for his score for the Best Picture winner The King's Speech, for which he also won a BAFTA Award and earned a Golden Globe nomination. He previously garnered Oscar and BAFTA Award nominations for his score for the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox; Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations for David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; and Oscar and BAFTA Award nominations for Stephen Frears' The Queen. In addition, Desplat won a Golden Globe Award for John Curran's The Painted Veil, and also received Golden Globe nominations for his scores for Stephen Gaghan's Syriana and Peter Webber's Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Desplat more recently created the scores for The Tree of Life, directed by Terrence Malick; George Clooney's The Ides of March; Carnage, which reunited him with Roman Polanski; Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; and the two-film finale of the Harry Potter film franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and 2.
Oscar winner Ben Affleck (The Town, Good Will Hunting) directs and stars in Argo. Based on real events, the dramatic thriller Argo chronicles the life-or-death covert operation to rescue six Americans, which unfolded behind the scenes of the Iran hostage crisis, focusing on the little-known role that the CIA and Hollywood played-information that was not declassified until many years after the event.
On November 4, 1979, as the Iranian revolution reaches its boiling point, militants storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. But, in the midst of the chaos, six Americans manage to slip away and find refuge in the home of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor. Knowing it is only a matter of time before the six are found out and likely killed, the Canadian and American governments ask the CIA to intervene. The CIA turns to their top "exfiltration" specialist, Tony Mendez, to come up with a plan to get the six Americans safely out of the country. A plan so incredible, it could only happen in the movies.