How Many Sheep, Geese, and Paul McCartneys Will Be at the Olympic Opening Ceremony Tonight?
We’re mere hours away from tonight’s 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, and so I want you to consider this next question in full: Are you mentally prepared for the madness? Four years since Beijing blew everyone’s mind, proud Brit director Danny Boyle will try to translate his Slumdog Millionaire-y magic into kicking off the world’s greatest clash of transcendent athletics and pure will and thrill of victory and triumph of defeat and all that stuff. So as to elevate the pizzazz, Boyle and his team have been keeping the details of the ceremony under wraps. But thanks to Deadline, we do now have some idea about what we’ll soon be seeing. If you actually think you might become so excited by whatever goes down tonight that you’ll spill your U.K. cultural-immersion tea-and-scone setup all over yourself at the first sight of something weird, you should probably check out this breakdown.
Name of Show: Isles of Wonder
Cost: $43 million
Inspiration: Caliban’s speech in The Tempest/”tribute to Britain through the ages”
Number of actors: 15,000
Number of props: 12,956
Number of costumes: 23,000
Number of horses: 12
Number of cows: 3
Number of goats: 2
Number of chickens: 10
Number of ducks: 10
Number of geese: 9
Number of sheep: 70
Number of world dignitaries: At least five, including the Queen, of course, as well as David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Dmitry Medvedev, and Michelle Obama
Number of David Beckhams: 1
Number of Judi Denches: 1
Number of Brangelinas: 1
Number of 40-foot-tall Voldemorts: 1
Number of 30-foot-tall Mary Poppinses: 1
Number of Paul McCartneys closing out the night with “Hey Jude”: 1
Number of sheepdogs: 3
Number of songs from The Kinks’ The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society: zero, as far we can tell, which is somewhat surprising considering the thematic similarities between that classic album and all the geese and ducks that Danny Boyle is going to have running around a fake British countryside tonight, but let’s get in the mood with a Kinks song anyway, enjoy!
Filed Under: Danny Boyle, Olympics, Paul Mccartney
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