Opening Ceremony to Star Cows, Sheep

Director Danny Boyle has unveiled his vision for the London Olympics opening ceremony-he plans to recreate the British countryside, complete with farm animals, inside the Olympic Arena.

Well aware it would be a tough slog to match Beijing in terms of glitz and sheer spectacle, filmmaker Danny Boyle has decided to keep it real during the London Olympic opening ceremony. Boyle, the creative director for the event, has cast real farmyard animals-including two goats, three cows, 10 chickens, 10 ducks and 70 sheep-in a bid to recreate Britain's "green and pleasant land" inside the Olympic stadium. Unveiling a replica of the set this morning, the Slumdog Millionaire director described the British countryside as "something that still exists, and something that cries out to all of us like a childhood memory."

The $42 million extravaganza, entitled "Isles of Wonder," will see a cast of thousands dance on top of the simulated landscape, which will come replete with real soil, real grass, a village cricket team and ploughs. "[There] will be real clouds that will be hanging over the stadium," he told reporters. "Work that out if you can. We know we're an island culture and an island climate. One of these clouds will provide rain on the evening, just in case it doesn't rain."

A giant "river"-represented in Boyle's model by sparkly paper-will surround the countryside, allowing athletes to walk on water as they enter the Olympic Arena. A massive replica of Glastonbury Tor-a pagan hill in southwest England-has already been erected at one end of the stadium and hundreds of members of the public will crowd before it during the ceremony in a mosh pit. On the other end of the stadium, revelers will fill a second mosh pit which, bizarrely, will be "more like the last night of the proms"-Britain's classical music festival which is staged every summer. "We hope the two mosh pits will do battle with each other," Boyle said.

The latter mosh pit will be situated near the biggest harmonically tuned bell in the world. "The 1948 games brought to London nations that had been at war," Boyle said. "The bells weren't rung during the war. They rang to announce the peace. So we will begin our ceremony with a symbol of peace."

Britain's Daily Mail tabloid has already protested that the mock-up of the stadium looks like a set from the children's program the Teletubbies.

But Boyle maintains the set will help give the ceremony a moving narrative arch. He previously disclosed that lines from Shakespeare's The Tempest inspired him. "Be not afeared," read the lines from the play. "The isle is of full of noises. Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not." TIME