In the early years of his career in the 1990s, Hannigan worked as composer for Electronic Arts Europe before basing his studio at Pinewood Studios in England for ten years between 19, where he sometimes worked as a sound designer on films alongside composing. His music is heard in numerous television shows, such as the BBC's Top Gear, Amazon's The Grand Tour, Netflix's 100 Humans, Floor Is Lava, Primeval, Disney's The World According to Jeff Goldblum and BBC America's Primeval.

Hannigan's other music credits include scores for Audible's adaptations of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman (DC Comics), the Audie Award winning Alien dramas (2016–2019), Unseen Academicals (Discworld 37) and BBC Radio 4's adaptations of Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens and Neverwhere.

Because the thing about football-the most important thing about football-is that it is never just about football.James Hannigan (born 23 July 1971) is a British composer with credits in the Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Command and Conquer (including Red Alert 3's well-known Soviet March), Dead Space, Warhammer, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, RuneScape, Evil Genius, EA Sports and Theme Park video game series, among others. As the big match approaches, these four lives are entangled and changed forever. Nutt (about whom no one knows very much, including Mr. Meanwhile, Trev (a handsome street urchin and a right good kicker) falls hard for kitchen maid Juliet (beautiful, dim, and perhaps the greatest fashion model there ever was), and Juliet's best pal, UU night cook Glenda (homely, sensible, and a baker of jolly good pies) befriends the mysterious Mr. Oh, and on top of that, they must win a football match without using magic. To begin with, they have to figure out just what it is that makes this sport-soccer with a bit of rugby thrown in-so popular with Ankh-Morporkians of all ages and social strata.

And so when Lord Vetinari, the city's benevolent tyrant, strongly suggests to Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully that the university revive an erstwhile tradition and once again put forth a football team composed of faculty, students, and staff, the wizards of UU find themselves in a quandary. The wizards at Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University are renowned for many things-wisdom, magic, and their love of teatime-but athletics is most assuredly not on the list.