The Slumdog Millionaire director signed on to orchestrate the sporting spectacular’s kick-off event in July (27Jul12) and he admits the task of creating a jaw-dropping show to be viewed by millions of people hasn’t been easy.
He tells Vogue “It’s a challenge, of course, because it can easily be just a cold spectacle – awe-inspiring but not necessarily of the heart – and we want the ceremony to have a visceral effect on the people, for it to be a collective experience. Stirring emotion is hard in a stadium.”
But the Oscar winner reveals he found inspiration in an unlikely place – Frankenstein, which fuses elements of romanticism and the creation of life.
He adds, “(There is) quite a lot of Frankenstein in the show. I mean, we don’t reanimate dead creatures, but we did use Frankenstein as a dry run for a lot of ideas for this.”
And if Boyle’s vision is realised, he says the the venue will look “more like a cauldron, with all the people hovering over and around you”.
The filmmaker has had a lot of experience with the theme – he directed a production of Frankenstein for the National Theatre in England last year (11).
