{"id":612732,"date":"2026-09-03T00:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T00:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/612732\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T00:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T00:20:13","slug":"danny-boyle-on-new-film-ink-in-venice-guy-pearce-jack-oconnell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/612732\/","title":{"rendered":"Danny Boyle on new film Ink in Venice Guy Pearce, Jack O’Connell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRupert Murdoch<\/a> and the world of British tabloid journalism were in the spotlight in Venice on Tuesday as Danny Boyle<\/a> presented his new film Ink<\/a>, which opens the 83rd Biennale Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, adapted from James Graham\u2019s stage play, depicts Murdoch\u2019s entry into the British newspaper scene, when he acquired the then-failing tabloid The Sun in 1969.<\/p>\n

\n\tHiring Larry Lamb as editor, the two combined far-right political reporting and populist rabble to turn the paper into a dark force in British media. Murdoch would take the lessons learned at The Sun and apply them to build his U.S. media empire with The New York Post and Fox News.<\/p>\n

\n\tGuy Pearce<\/a> plays Murdoch. Jack O\u2019Connell (Sinners) plays Lamb. Claire Foy<\/a> (The Crown, Women Talking) co-stars as Jules Davies, an amalgam of female executives who worked under Lamb at The Sun and a character new to the film adaptation.<\/p>\n

\n\tBoyle said during a press conference that he was careful, as with the stage version not to \u201cmonsterize\u201d Rupert Murdoch \u201cbecause he represented at the time [a] breath of fresh air in what was a very rigid British society. It begins with something that\u2019s fun and different, challenging a rigid order\u2026 It was important to us that the audience feels complicit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFoy said she found plunging into the world of \u201860s tabloid journalism \u201creally intoxicating,\u201d admitting to feeling \u201cquite jealous\u201d of Fleet Street reporters. \u201cThey had power at their fingertips. They knew what they wrote would be what people read and what people believed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPearce revealed that Murdoch himself was pleased with the film\u2019s casting. \u201cI had some messaging with Elizabeth [Murdoch], his daughter, and she said \u2018Dad\u2019s very happy that you are playing him.\u2019 But he hadn\u2019t seen the film at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGraham said Murdoch had, however, caught the original play. \u201cHe came to see the play twice,\u201d he recalled, though he didn\u2019t give his opinion of the story. \u201cHe\u2019s very good at not giving anything away which I think is one of his secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThough the film is set in the 1960s, Boyle said he wasn\u2019t as interested in making a period piece, arguing that Ink was \u201cabout the modern world\u201d showing many of the trends in the media that shape the current world.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs divisive as Rupert Murdoch and The Sun were, and are, Boyle argued, the father of modern tabloid journalism was, at his heart, \u201ca print man\u201d who he thinks must be \u201cdriven to despair\u201d at the disappearance of the print industry, \u201cthe tactile world that we used to depend on to read the stories about us.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBoyle ended the press conference with an extolment of the value of journalism that \u201cspeaks truth to power,\u201d calling it \u201cone of great uprights of any civilization.\u201d He also acknowledged the great threats facing journalists, print or otherwise, in the age of AI. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe danger with the tech giants, obviously [is that] they\u2019ll be able to have an AI journalist who\u2019s much more efficient, lot cheaper, etc. etc.,\u201d the director said. \u201cBut will that AI journalist speak truth to that power that\u2019s created it? That\u2019s going to be very very tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInk is screening in competition in Venice. The film will release in select theaters in the U.S. on Dec. 11 before going out on Netflix on Jan. 8 in the U.S. and Latin America. Studiocanal is releasing the film theatrically across multiple territories, including the U.K., France, Germany, Poland, Australia and New Zealand, starting with the U.K. release on Jan. 8. Studiocanal is also handling worldwide sales, and is co-representing domestic with WME Independent. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rupert Murdoch and the world of British tabloid journalism were in the spotlight in Venice on Tuesday as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,52031,26902,93,186084,61,40662,1042,60,99893,9358,237624,802],"class_list":["post-612732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-claire-foy","tag-danny-boyle","tag-entertainment","tag-guy-pearce","tag-ie","tag-ink","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-jack-oconnell","tag-rupert-murdoch","tag-venice-2026","tag-venice-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}