Opening Ceremony London 2012

London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony start time in New Zealand   

The Opening ceremony of London 2012 is expected to be an eye-popping event (file pic)

The London 2012 Olympic Opening ceremony is set to be a three-hour extravaganza and will start at 8am Saturday morning, New Zealand time.

With an impressive cast and crew of some 10,000, the July 27 ceremony is expected to attract a world-wide viewing audience of 1 billion.

Director Danny Boyle's ceremony, called Isles of Wonder, is inspired by William Shakespeare's The Tempest. He has revealed that the opening sequence will feature an idyllic British countryside setting complete with live farm animals, including 70 sheep, 12 horses, 10 chickens and nine geese. Former Beatle Paul McCartney has said he will perform the closing act.

London organisers said Boyle was "tightening" the ceremony by up to 30 minutes to ensure the show, scheduled for three hours, concludes between midnight and 12:30am local time (NZT 11-11.30am).

And the International Olympic Committee has pressed London organisers to make sure the show doesn't overrun so that athletes can get to bed at a reasonable hour. Many of the athletes will be able to walk back to their housing, located adjacent to the Olympic Park, after the ceremony.

Although the London Olympics opening ceremony will be on a grand spectacle it won’t be a surprise.

Boyle wanted the details to stay secret and games chief Sebastian Coe has pleaded for insiders to stop leaking details of the extravaganza.

But in the age of camera phones and social media, with thousands of performers in the ceremony, thousands of Olympic security and staff and more than 10,000 journalists already at the Olympic Park, not much can be kept out of the public domain.

"Part of the modern world means you can't really do that," Boyle acknowledged about keeping secrets as he showed journalists a mock-up of the set for the opening scene of the ceremony, weeks before the event.

So, a spoiler alert: Stop reading now if you want the opening ceremony to be a surprise. Stop, stop, stop.

But if you are as irresistibly curious as the rest of us, well, prepare for everything from James Bond to Lord Voldemort to a spoonful of sugar.

Boyle has revealed only selected details about the show, But since the performers started rehearsals in June at the Olympic Stadium - and an army of journalists started arriving to cover the July 27-Aug 12 games - a trickle of details about the £27 million opening ceremony has become a torrent.

The leaks became too much for Coe, who tweeted: "Share the frustration of volunteer performers and the public at Opening Ceremony being unofficially trailed. Let's#savethesurprise."

His imploring hashtag fell on deaf ears. Still more information emerged.

So what do we know?

The ceremony's theme is Isles of Wonder, inspired by William Shakespeare's play about shipwrecked castaways, The Tempest. An actor is due to recite Caliban's speech, the one that runs "Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises." Mark Rylance, who had been due to perform the lines, pulled out after the death of his stepdaughter. Kenneth Branagh is rumored to be his replacement.

Despite Boyle's enchanted-island inspiration, few expect the man who depicted Scottish heroin addicts in Trainspotting and Indian slum dwellers in Slumdog Millionaire to deliver a sanitised image of Britain.

It sounds more like Isles of Wonder and Woe - with a big dash of British whimsy thrown in.

Boyle has said the show is "trying to show the best of us, but we're also trying to show many, many different things about our country".

The ceremony will open with the sound of a 27-ton bell – the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world - forged at London's 442-year-old Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which made London's Big Ben and Philadelphia's Liberty Bell.

A prerecorded segment has been filmed inside Buckingham Palace, reportedly involving Queen Elizabeth II and Daniel Craig as secret agent James Bond. If rumuor is to be believed, a stuntman dressed as 007 will parachute into the stadium to start the show.

The opening sequence will evoke a pastoral idyll, the "green and pleasant land" described in William Blake's poem 'Jerusalem', which has been set to music and is regarded as England's unofficial national anthem. There's a meadow, livestock, a farmer plowing his field, a cricket match - and, in a nod to Britain's plethora of rural summer music festivals, a mosh pit.

Boyle hasn't disclosed what comes next, but has said the ceremony will depict Britain's past, present and future for a global television audience estimated at 1 billion. In addition to the athletes and performers, some 60,000 spectators will be in the stadium, including political leaders from around the world. US first lady Michelle Obama and her daughters and a sprinkling of European and celebrity royalty will be among those attending.

Aerial photographs of the set for the second section of the show depict dark buildings and smokestacks with the River Thames running through it. This is the other side of the country described in 'Jerusalem' - a land of "dark satanic mills".

A third act will tackle the regeneration of east London, where the Olympics are taking place, as parkland and a creative heartland, home to many artists, designers and internet startups.

There will be vignettes drawing on British history - Boyle's people-power version of it - including Depression-era jobless protesters and nurses performing a tribute to the National Health Service, founded in 1948 to provide free health care for all Britons and now a much fought-over national institution.

Performers dressed as miners and factory workers have also been seen going into the stadium, and one set piece is a model of the Empire Windrush, a ship that brought hundreds of Caribbean migrants to Britain in 1948.

According to the Sunday Times, one section will feature characters from children's fiction classics including Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan - and a showdown between Voldemort, the villain of JK Rowling's Harry Potter books, and a horde of flying magical nannies based on Mary Poppins.

Boyle has stressed that the ceremony is not a concert - "the real stars are the athletes" - but music will play a key role, with musical direction by electronic duo Underworld, who have worked with Boyle since his 1996 movie Trainspotting.

Music heard coming from the stadium in recent days ranges from 'Jerusalem' - of course - to songs by The Beatles, The Who, the Sex Pistols, and Vangelis' theme from Chariots of Fire.

There are also songs by newer acts, including Dizzee Rascal and Tinie Tempah, two homegrown stars forged in the gritty London environment that

Boyle is celebrating.

The final act will be former Beatle Paul McCartney - due to lead the audience in a sing-along of 'Hey Jude', with thousands of voices urging "take a sad song and make it better".

Final touches are still being put on the show, with a technical rehearsal scheduled for Monday evening and a final dress rehearsal. Boyle has already cut a stunt bike sequence to try to keep the show to its allotted three-hour running time so everyone can use public transport to get home.

Boyle's spectacle is only part of the Summer Games opening ceremony, much of which is dictated by Olympic protocol.

There also will be a parade of athletes from the more than 200 participating nations, speeches by dignitaries - including the queen, who will officially declare the games open - and of course the lighting of the Olympic cauldron.

The identity of the torchbearer who will ignite the cauldron it is the most closely guarded secret of all - and so far, that has not leaked.