"Slumdog" Director Tapped to Make London Olympics Shine
Getty Images for AFI
Director Danny Boyle of "Slumdog Millionaire" arrives at the 2008 AFI Fest Tribute To Danny Boyle held at Arclight Hollywood.
I don’t know about you, but when I think of the Summer Olympics, I think of young Indian street urchins being blinded and dead babies crawling on ceilings. That’s right, gang! “Trainspotting” and “Slumdog Millionaire” director Danny Boyle has been tapped as tapped as artistic director for the 2012 Opening ceremonies, with “the Hours” director Stephen Daldry named as creative boss for the whole shebang! Who else is ready for Wembley Stadium to be turned into a giant toilet Mark Renton can crawl out of? From Tim Adler over at Deadline:
The Oscar-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire Danny Boyle, and Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry, have been tapped as creative bosses of the London 2012 Olympics. Stephen Daldry will be in overall creative charge of the Olympics and Paralympics, while Danny Boyle will be artistic director of the main opening ceremony. Boyle, whose new version of Frankenstein opens at the National Theatre later this year, said that he wanted to create a “thrilling, enthralling and captivating evening”…The opening Olympic Games ceremony has long fascinated film directors. Chinese director Zhang Yimou spent £70 million ($105 million) designing the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing event.
And then you have Vancouver, which spent five bucks on an inflatable beaver for their opening ceremony, which I assume was directed by a gaffer from the “Eclipse” set.
Kidding aside, I think Boyle is a fantastic choice to direct the opening ceremonies in London. A lot of people slagged Boyle for supposedly “using” the child actors in “Slumdog,” a charge I always hated. He was making a film set in India, and needed to hire Indian child actors. So he did. What’s he supposed to do after that? Adopt them? It’s a job.
Anyway, Boyle excels at creating movies that are, above all else, vibrant. I remember the first time I saw “Trainspotting” in the theater. Here you had a movie about perhaps the most depressing subject on Earth (heroin addiction), yet Boyle made it practically a giddy affair. His cuts and his musical selections make his movies bounce the way few other films do. You want a thrilling opening ceremony? Boyle can do that. Oh, can he do that.
Let’s face it. I doubt any Olympic opening ceremony will ever top Beijing. It’s just not possible. They had human boxes, for Pete’s sake. It was LUNACY. It’s the kind of thing you can only accomplish when your nation has a billion people, your government is a communist dictatorship, and you want to tell world just how awesome you are. England can barely afford its rent right now.
But Boyle helps. Boyle has never worked on any $250 million movies. He knows how to dazzle folks while keeping to a relatively low budget. Count on him doing it once more.
