2016 Rio Olympics: Opening Ceremony to Have Less Budget as Brazil Economy Weakens

The opening and closing ceremonies of Rio Olympic and Paralympic games will be in low budget, much less than in London Olympics, ceremonies' directors have said. (Rio de Janeiro Mayor Says City will be Ready for Olympics)

Since the beginning of 2015, the Brazilian economy has done poorly, increasing the pessimistic outlook by markets, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday. (Olympic Preparations Reshaping Rio de Janeiro)

New official data showed that Brazil's economy will shrink by 2.1 percent, annual inflation rate will be 9.25 percent, and there are calls to impeach Brazil president Dilma Rousseff. (Doubts Hover Over 2016 Rio Sailing Venue)

Fernando Meirelles, best known for directing the Oscar nominated 2002 film 'City of God', is one of the directors for Rio Olympics ceremonies. He estimated that Rio Olympics will spend only ten percent of what London did on four ceremonies three years ago. (Brazil Increases Budget for 2016 Rio Olympics)

"Brazil is in a kind of financial crisis, everybody knows. We will have a low budget but I'm happy to work with this low budget. I would be ashamed to waste what London spent in a country where we need sanitation; where education needs money," he said during a press conference on Tuesday.

Meirelles admitted that at the very beginning the director team of Olympics ceremonies hoped to use some high-tech equipments such as aerial drones and moving stages. But later on they know it was not affordable.

"There are a lot of limits, but we are going to find the solutions," he added.

The ceremonies director of the Rio 2016 organizing committee, Leonardo Caetano, said despite of the low budget, the displaying impact of the ceremonies at the Maracana stadium will not be affected and they will go into the the heart of more than 3 billion people who watch the event on TV.

"We will not have luxury, but we will have originality," he said. "We will spend less, but we compensate with creativity, rhythm and emotion."

Pressed for the details of the ceremonies, directors all kept their mouth shut.

"We are going to hide the content of ceremony as many as possible, otherwise there will be no surprise," said Andrucha Waddington, another awarding-winning filmmaker who is part of the director team.

Meirelles said he'd try to avoid from repeating cliches of Rio and Brazil, such as beach, samba and football, but some of them is unavoidable. "Having an Olympics in Rio without any mention of Carnival would be crazy," he said. "Carnival's not a cliche. People live Carnival."