With an unrivaled pool of creative and executive talent to draw from across Los Angeles, the question was always who from the worlds of film and television would Casey Wasserman tap to add Hollywood sizzle to the 2028 Olympic Games.

We now have the answer.

On Tuesday, LA28 chairman and president Wasserman announced that producer and former Disney executive Peter Rice will serve as the head of ceremonies and content for the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In this role, Rice is now tasked with overseeing both the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic games which will take place across four nights at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sofi Stadium.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Rice said his conversations with Wasserman started about six weeks ago but stressed that it was the “deep trust between Casey and me that’s built on three decades of knowing each other completely,” that aligned them in their vision. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and I couldn’t say no. I love the Olympics and the opening and closing ceremonies are a uniquely unifying event that bring the world together. The opportunity to do that in the town that I call home is both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.”

Rice, who’s British, began his career at 20th Century Fox in 1989, where he ascended the ranks. He served as president of Fox Searchlight Pictures where he racked up awards with a stream of indie hits including Slumdog Millionaire, Little Miss Sunshine and Sideways. In 2017 he was promoted to president of 21st Century Fox and after Disney’s acquisition of the studio, he transitioned to the role of chairman of Walt Disney Television and chairman of General Entertainment. He was ousted by then CEO Bob Chapek in 2022, which outraged much of the town.

For the past few years, he’s been working as an independent producer with a producing and co-financing deal with A24 and has several film and television projects in the works. Within the Hollywood rumor mill, he’s regularly mentioned as a candidate for most level high-level executive positions that open up, but he said this new role working for LA28 takes him out of the running for any executive position for the next three years but he will continue to produce.

Wasserman, in an interview with THR, declined to put an exact figure on the budget that would be available but said that Rice would be provided with whatever resources he needed (for perspective, the Paris opening ceremonies had a reported budget of $108 million).

“When you think about what we expect of ourselves and what the world is going to expect of us, clearly we’re the creative capital of the world and Hollywood is a big piece of that, but we better knock people’s socks off,” said Wasserman, who, during an interview noted that he had a list of candidates but that Rice was always his number one “overall” pick to fill the role. “Peter is the one we started with, and we didn’t have to engage in meaningful conversations with anyone else.”

Rice’s portfolio as an executive includes dozens of Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations across thousands of hours of content. What his CV lacks, however, is any notable experience producing live events.

“Peter’s job is not to have to do everything it’s about bringing together the best people and managing and supporting them,” said Wasserman who noted that an RFP is already out to production companies who specialize in these types of events.

“It’s a lot to handle. It’s a massive budget across four nights and it must all be integrated into the larger organization with transportation and security and logistical issues. You can’t lose sight of the budget and the operational components, but you also can’t lose sight of the fact that we’re putting on a show,” said Wasserman. “At Disney he was running a massive business inside a global organization and at its heart he had to produce great things. It’s that tension and coordination and conflict which is going to produce the best result, and that’s why I couldn’t imagine someone better than Peter to fill the role.”

Rice has a deep bench of relationships across the industry that he’s built over decades which includes Darren Aronofsky, Danny Boyle, Quinta Brunson, Guillermo Del Toro, Dan Fogelman and Mike White, among countless others. But he declined to say who he hopes to enlist in this new endeavor.

“The biggest part of my job is to now attract the creative people to be involved in the ceremonies and create an environment which allows them to dream and do their best work which is synonymous with what I’ve been trying to do throughout my career,” said Rice. “We have three years to put it on and to celebrate the sporting excellence and welcome people to our city and capture the innovation and creative excellence that is Los Angeles. There’s nothing quite like that.”

Over the past eight months, L.A. has suffered through two cataclysmic fires and has become a primary battle ground over the Trump Administration’s draconian immigration crackdown, which has led to city-wide protests. Not exactly the kind of optics a city preparing for the Olympics would invite. “I was born in L.A., and I love this city and the reason I decided to lead this effort is because I believe in the power of sports and big events to become a catalyst for change,” said Wasserman, when asked about the fraught local climate. “The Olympics aren’t about red and blue — they’re about the red, white and blue and the fact that we all share the same national anthem. This is an opportunity to unite the country behind the stars and stripes and find that shared sense of purpose that can bring people closer together.”