Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle said his new film raises “terrifying” concerns about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), and highlights “the danger journalism is in now”.
Ink, starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy, is based on the James Graham play about media mogul Rupert Murdoch purchasing and reinventing The Sun as a tabloid newspaper in the late 1960s.
The biographical drama also centres around his relationship with Larry Lamb, the former northern editor of the Daily Mail who he poached to become The Sun’s new editor-in-chief.
Director and producer Boyle said the film feels “like a contemporary story” despite being set in the 1960s while speaking to the Press Association ahead of its screening at the BFI London Film Festival.
The 69-year-old said: “You can read it very easily about the attention economy or the clickbait.
“It’s like the very first origins of that bushfire that we’re now right in the middle of.”
Danny Boyle (left) and Guy Pearce attend the gala screening of Ink as part of the BFI’s London film festival at BFI Southbank in central London yesterday. Photo credit: Ian West/PA Wire
Boyle said the true events the film is based on “taught us how important independent journalism is to a free society”, adding: “It makes you see the danger that journalism is in now.
“It’s being easily replaced by AI, and that is terrifying.
“It seems an obvious thing to say but it’s also worth dwelling on before we go any further, because we’re hurtling towards enormous change.”
The filmmaker continued: “We are siloed by tech. You get the news feed that you think you want. It just reflects it back to you.
“That’s the trick of it – the algorithm. We end up in these silos, and we end up separate from each other.
“We’ve lost that communal sense, which used to be a lot healthier.”
O’Connell described the events depicted in the film as a “tipping point” that “changed the way we get our media”.
Reflecting on how Murdoch and Lamb transformed the journalism sector, the 36-year-old told PA: “These guys were at the brunt of it.
“I think in the pursuit of all that, certain things are lost.”
Ink will be released in cinemas in January 2027.
Source: Press Association