Theodore Shapiro
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Theodore Michael Shapiro (born September 29, 1971, in Washington, D.C.) is an American film and television composer with one of the most prolific careers in Hollywood comedy scoring. He trained at Brown University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in music in 1993, and then at the Juilliard School, where he completed a Master of Fine Arts in composition in 1995. Over the following three decades he built a reputation as the go-to composer for major comedy directors, collaborating frequently with Ben Stiller, Paul Feig, Jay Roach, Karyn Kusama, and Rawson Marshall Thurber.
His film scores include State and Main (2000), 13 Going on 30 (2004), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Tropic Thunder (2008), Marley and Me (2008), Idiocracy (2006), A Simple Favor (2018), and The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021). On television, his score for Ben Stiller's Severance (Apple TV+) won him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series in both 2022 and 2025.
Shapiro composed the original score for Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016), and also made a brief on-screen cameo in the film as the keyboardist for Beasts of Mayhem, the in-universe heavy metal band performing at the Stonebrook Theatre when the ghost Mayhem manifests onstage during the film's Chapter 08. The band's presence at a heavy metal concert was conceived as a comedic coincidence. The first song Beasts of Mayhem perform in the scene, "Low Then High," does not appear on the official released soundtrack. Shapiro co-wrote both songs credited to "Beasts of Mayhem" on the accompanying soundtrack album with guitarist Ryan Levine. The score was released as Ghostbusters (2016): Original Motion Picture Score on July 8, 2016.