James Gunn in the past, Bates had a good idea on how Gunn wanted things done. Before any of the cinematography actually started, Gunn had Bates write several themes prior to shooting so the scene could be matched to the music instead of the score being created to fit the scene. This required a fair bit of cooperation between Bates and Gunn in advance since these scores would not only be the final piece, instead of a temporary filler acting as a placeholder, but they also influenced the actual performance of everyone on set. This amount of work and effort required a massive undertaking by both Bates and his team. For 4 months, they clocked upwards of 100-hour work weeks to produce this finished product. After all the work, they had a total of 29 different soundtracks giving a combined total of 64:34 of music. "At least half the cues in the movie have more than 500 tracks of audio," Bates was quoted in an interview with Melinda Newman on HitFix. This was a result of there being orchestral passages that were doubled or tripled, choirs, overdubs, and other instrumentals. That same year, Bates composed the score to the stylish neo-noir action film John Wick, collaborating with Joel J. Richard and Marilyn Manson. The film proved a surprise critical and financial success, and Bates returned to score its 2017 sequel, and also its third installment. He re-teamed with that film's co-director David Leitch to score a spiritual successor, the Cold War-era spy thriller Atomic Blonde. Video game scoring Bates composed the soundtrack for the PlayStation 3 games God of War: Ascension and Army of Two: The 40th Day, as well as the PlayStation 4 game Killzone: Shadow Fall. Most recently he composed for the largest first-person shooter app in the world, China's Crossfire. Other projects In 2014, Bates co-wrote and produced Marilyn Manson's record The Pale Emperor. The album debuted at number 8 on the Billboard 200, while the single "Deep Six" went on to chart higher than any other single by Marilyn Manson on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Chart. Bates joined the band in 2015 as the lead guitarist for The Hell Not Hallelujah Tour. The album's song "Cupid Carries a Gun" was used as the opening title music of the TV show Salem, and Bates composed the show's score. In April 2015 he left Marilyn Manson to resume film