Danny Boyle to bring Olympic Games mood to Armistice event

IT WAS a moment of national pride when Danny Boyle’s London Olympic Games opening ceremony was watched across the world in 2012.

Now it is hoped that the director will capture the mood of the nation in the same way during events to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. The Oscar-winning director has been commissioned by 14-18 Now, a five-year arts project “connecting people with the First World War” to mark the centenary of Armistice Day.

Sources told The Sunday Times that his plans include one to get people to write the names of soldiers on biodegradable pieces of paper and send them out to sea, just as Britain sent its men to fight Germany.

The move could prove controversial, given the furore over waste in the oceans. Both 14-18 Now and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which is running the commemorations, refused to comment, saying that the rumour was “speculative” with nothing confirmed.

On its website the arts project says: “Filmmaker Danny Boyle invites communities across the UK to come together in marking 100 years since the Armistice and the end of the war. Details will be announced later this year.”

Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has also been enlisted to create a film to be show in schools, cinemas and on the BBC using archive footage from the Imperial War Museum as well as interviews with veterans. It is understood that the footage will be colourised and enhanced.

Mr Jackson said: “We are not making the usual film you’d expect on the First World War. We’re making a film which shows this incredible footage in which the faces of these men just jump out at you.”

The Armistice Day celebrations on Nov 11 will also see the Government invite Frank-walter Steinmeier, the German president, to join the Queen at Westminster Abbey for the televised commemoration.

Jeremy Wright, the culture Secretary, said: “We have made arrangements for 10,000 members of the public to process past the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday to express their thanks to the generation that gave so much. Bells will ring out across the world to replicate the outpouring of relief that took place in 1918, and to mark the peace and friendship that we now enjoy between nations.”