The ‘Roofman’ Soundtrack Releases
Varèse Sarabande announces the release of the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for Roofman, featuring music by composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Christopher Bear (Grizzly Bear) with contributions from GRAMMY®-winning multi-instrumentalist Jon Natchez (The War on Drugs). Available now across digital platforms in both standard and HD audio, the soundtrack will also be released on vinyl and CD February 20 and is available now for pre-order. Each physical edition includes liner notes by Bear and the film’s director, Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines). The biographical crime-comedy film, which stars Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst and Peter Dinklage, opened to broad acclaim on October 10th, and is currently playing in theaters globally.
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Roofman tells the unbelievable true story of Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum), a struggling Army veteran who robbed dozens of fast-food restaurants across the country—sneaking in through holes he cut in their roofs and waiting for unsuspecting employees to arrive the next morning. Known to authorities as “Roofman,” Manchester was no ordinary criminal: he avoided violence, showed compassion toward his victims and even made sure they had coats before locking them in walk-in freezers. Eventually captured and sentenced to 45 years in prison, Manchester’s story took an even stranger turn when he escaped—spending six months hiding inside a Charlotte, NC, Toys “R” Us, where he created a secret double life and fell in love with a single mother (Kirsten Dunst).
Manchester’s incredible story is brought to life by director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines), who reunited with several longtime collaborators for Roofman. Among them is multi-instrumentalist Christopher Bear, whose band Grizzly Bear contributed music to Cianfrance’s Academy Award®–nominated 2010 film Blue Valentine. In the years since, Bear built an impressive solo career, composing scores for HBO’s High Maintenance, the 80th Venice Film Festival Best Documentary winner Thank You Very Much, and the 2023 Academy Award–nominated Past Lives (alongside his Grizzly Bear bandmate Daniel Rossen).
In Roofman, Bear’s cues reflect the contradictions of Manchester’s complex soul. As Cianfrance explains, “Here [is] a story of a hardened criminal who locks people in freezers, but makes sure they have their jackets; an army vet who escapes prison and doesn’t hide in the woods, surviving off of rainwater and grubs, rather he hides in a toy store and lives on baby food and Peanut M&M’s…. His humanity is what made Jeffrey a bad criminal. And I needed a score that walked that delicate line between his bad choices and his big heart.”
Bear’s music, he continues, “immediately gave the movie a sense of whimsy, a sense of curiosity…. It walked the tightrope, balancing the comic and tragic aspects of a complicated character’s life. And maybe, most importantly, it made him relatable, understandable.” For Bear, the process of illustrating Manchester’s story through music was among his most rewarding projects yet. “Creating the score for Roofman was such a joy,” recalls Bear in his liner notes. “While it is a tale full of robberies, evasion, and deception, at its core is a very human story revolved around Jeffery Manchester’s heart…. It was such a rich set of emotions and circumstances to explore—longing, heartache, fear, childlike joy, curious ingenuity, and fresh love—a complex musical tapestry to help tell this wild and remarkable story.”
Since its release earlier this month, Roofman has received an array of accolades from the press. Collider praised, “With a career-best Tatum at the center and an ensemble that fills in every corner with warmth and wit, Roofman is one of this year’s most pleasant surprises.” Next Best Picture hailed Roofman as “another standout film from Cianfrance who continues to pull us in with fascinating character studies and explorations of humanity.” The Hollywood Reporter declared, “This is the kind of disarming crowd-pleaser for which cringe-inducing clichés like ‘it will sneak up and steal your heart’ were invented…. It’s sentimental but sincere.”
Click here to stream or pre-order Roofman (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack).