Spoiler alert: Viewers can expect a dramatic countdown, giant whales, an illuminated globe and performers flying above the audience.

What remains a mystery is how ceremony organisers — led by China’s most famous filmmaker Zhang Yimou — plan to light the Olympic cauldron. The identity of the final torchbearer has been guarded like a state secret and a mock cauldron lighting was not a part of recent rehearsals.

Chinese media reports have speculated that the cauldron will be lit by a fire-breathing dragon or phoenix. Others say there will be five torchbearers who will set ablaze a cauldron shaped like the five interlocked Olympic rings.

Another guess involves basketball star Yao Ming, saying he will hold aloft in his massive hands a child who survived the 7.9 magnitude May earthquake that rattled Sichuan province in May, with the child tipping the torch into the cauldron.

While the ending of the ceremony is anyone’s guess, the footage from South Korean broadcaster SBS offered the first preview of the opening night show.

A Beijing Olympics official said Thursday the report was “disappointing.” Sun Weide, spokesman for Beijing’s Olympic organising committee, would not say whether SBS would be punished, only that officials were “checking into the situation.”

There were no great surprises from the footage shot in the darkened stadium, though it showed the lavishness of the 3 1/2-hour ceremony, expected to boast a cast of 10,000. Director Zhang spent three years designing the spectacle, seeking to boil 5,000 years of Chinese history into a 50-minute show.

The most impressive part of the show is a countdown accompanied by drums, the SBS report said. Footage showed rows of hundreds of people, flashing cards to form the number two, then one, while they chanted in Chinese and strobe lights flashed.

SBS spokesman Park Jae-man said it was regrettable if Beijing Olympics organisers felt offended by the broadcast. “The purpose of the broadcast was aimed at heightening enthusiasm toward the Beijing Olympics by showing South Korean viewers the magnificence of the opening ceremony. There was no other intention,” Park said.