Hans Zimmer has spoken of collaborating with Johnny Marr on the score for the upcoming James Bond film, No Time To Die.

• Read More: The 10 best James Bond themes ever

In a new interview with Variety, the iconic German composer said that “it was surprising just to get the call” from Bond producer Barbara Broccoli, adding that he “didn’t know” whether he wanted to be involved initially.

“So I phoned Johnny Marr, and I said, ‘I have two questions to ask you. First question is, what’s the only guitar part worth playing in a movie?’

“And he said, ‘the Bond part’ [the James Bond theme]. And I said, ‘yeah right. Second question: Do you think I should do the movie and would you play the guitar part?’ So that sort of settled that.”

Zimmer continued: “Johnny was right. He wanted to bring guitar back into the score. We were just embracing our inner John Barry [English composer who established the Bond music traditions in the 1960s].”

The pair have previously collaborated on the score for movies including Inception and The Amazing Spider-Man.

Speaking of beginning to promote No Time To Die ahead of it’s coronavirus-enforced postonement, Zimmer told Variety: “Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas came up with this great song, and we did a bit of that.

“It was great, because we played the BRITs, Johnny played guitar, and we were moving forward. Suddenly it became a No. 1 hit, and the movie was going to come out, and then everything stopped.”

In an interview with NME at the BRITs 2019, Marr said that he was “thrilled” to have provided guitar on Eilish’s theme, explaining: “When I heard the song, I thought ‘this is fantastic’. It’s very brave, being very minimalist. It’s her sound, and then the trick was to Bond-ify it.”

Meanwhile, No Time To Die has recently been given a new UK release date of November 12.