Tuner: Johnnie Burn Used Dolby Atmos to Make Hyperacusis Hit Hard

Sound designer Johnnie Burn engineered the Dolby Atmos mix of Daniel Roher’s crime thriller Tuner to replicate protagonist Niki’s hyperacusis as a physical assault on the audience. Leo Woodall leads the film as a piano tuner whose painfully acute hearing becomes a criminal asset.

Inside the Mix: Engineering a Condition You Can Feel in the Seat

Burn’s central problem was perceptual, not technical: the film only works if viewers experience sound the way Niki does. He built four separate auditory perspectives, ordinary hearing, Niki’s raw unprotected ears, hearing filtered through miniature earplugs, and the muffled world of heavy ear defenders.

The Atmos format gave Burn license to push volume in every channel simultaneously, surrounding the room rather than front-loading the screen. That spatial confidence is what separates an immersive mix from a loud one, monitored across our theatrical release tracking as awards-season sound conversations take shape.

“The Dolby Atmos mix was a further development of that because it gave us the ability to predominantly play sound at a much greater volume all around us.”, Johnnie Burn, sound designer

Burn credits the format with giving him room to take genuine risks. “With Atmos, you can be a lot more confident that your mix is going to be represented much more accurately, which allows you to be more daring and more adventurous,” he said.

Roher’s reaction during the mix, per Burn, was blunt: “This is a very adventurous mix.”

Woodall’s Safe-Cracker and a Cast Built for Pressure

Niki abandoned a concert-piano career when hyperacusis turned ordinary sound into pain, and criminals now recruit him to crack safes by ear alone. It is a role that demands Woodall carry near-silent sequences on physical precision rather than dialogue.

Roher, directing his first narrative feature after the documentary Navalny, surrounds his lead with a cast engineered for menace and texture: Havana Rose Liu, Dustin Hoffman, Lior Raz, Tovah Feldshuh and Jean Reno. Hoffman and Reno in particular give the film a heavyweight pedigree that balances Woodall’s younger, interior performance.

The project arrives as an original crime thriller with no franchise scaffolding, contrasting with contemporary action sequels crowding multiplex calendars. Its commercial distinction is the premium-format presentation itself, Dolby Vision and Atmos as the headline attraction.

Memorial Day Math: Why Black Bear Is Betting on the Holiday Corridor

Black Bear Pictures handles U.S. distribution with Elevation Pictures covering Canada, backed by producers JoAnne Sellar, Lila Yacoub, Teddy Schwarzman and Michael Heimler under the English Breakfast Productions banner. The film premiered at Telluride on August 30, 2025, banking festival credibility before its wide bow.

The May 2026 placement lands Tuner squarely in the Memorial Day corridor, North American exhibition’s most reliable launchpad for adult-skewing thrillers. A May 22 date captures the full four-day holiday; a May 29 slot rides the immediate post-holiday spillover, either way, distributors gain a vacation-extended footprint that multiplies opening-weekend showings.

For a sound-forward film, that corridor matters doubly: premium-format auditoriums command higher ticket prices, and Atmos-equipped screens are the film’s core selling proposition.

Every holiday-weekend premium booking converts Burn’s four-perspective mix from a craft curiosity into a direct revenue lever, with the theatrical window functioning as the film’s entire marketing engine before any downstream licensing conversation begins.