Rumored a couple of weeks ago, and now confirmed, Danny Boyle will join fellow Brit filmmaker Stephen Daldry as the creative bosses for the 2012 London Olympics.
Daldry will be heading up the overall creative work on both the Olympics and Paralympics while Boyle will be in charge of the opening ceremonies. Eager to put on a “thrilling, enthralling and captivating evening,” Boyle may need a fair bit of cash to match the $105 million spectacle put on by Zhang Yimou for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. There’s no word yet on what Boyle’s approach will be, but given his visually creative eye, it should be quite something to watch.
The Olympic gig continues a particularly busy year for Boyle who is currently in post-production on his adaptation of Aron Ralston’s miraculous survival story, “127 Hours” starring James Franco and is lining up Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” at London’s National Theater for a debut next year. As for Daldry, his name was recently batted around for the director’s chair for “Breaking Dawn” (which went to Bill Condon) and he’s recently signed on to direct an adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close.”