Nicholas Britell (born October 17, 1980) is an American composer, pianist, and film producer based in New York City. He has scored both of Barry Jenkins' studio films, Moonlight (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), both of which received nominations for Best Original Score at the Academy Awards. He has also worked with Adam McKay, scoring his two most recent films, The Big Short (2015) and Vice (2018). The HBO original series Succession (2018–present) marked Britell's entry into television. Britell scored every episode of the first and second season, earning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music and the Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Score – TV Show/Limited Series. His score for the second season of Succession was nominated in 2020 for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series.
At the World Soundtrack Awards, Britell was awarded Film Composer of the Year in 2019 for his scores for Vice and If Beale Street Could Talk and Television Composer of the Year in 2020 for Succession. His works, as described by Soraya McDonald of Film Comment, "seem to organically straddle accessibility and sophistication in a way that goes beyond the typical programming of a big-city pops orchestra...That might have something to do with the fact that Britell has long had one foot in the world of hip-hop and another in the world of classical music."