James Newton Howard (born June 9, 1951) is an American film composer and music producer. He has scored over 100 films and is the recipient of a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, and nine nominations for Academy Awards.

His most highly regarded film scores are Pretty Woman (1990), The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), Dinosaur (2000), The Village (2004), King Kong (2005), Batman Begins (2005) and its sequel The Dark Knight (2008) (both composed with Hans Zimmer), Michael Clayton (2007) and the Fantastic Beasts trilogy (2016–2022). He has collaborated extensively with directors M. Night Shyamalan and Francis Lawrence, having scored eight of Shyamalan's films since The Sixth Sense (1999) and all of Lawrence's films since I Am Legend (2007).