Venice Film Festival season has officially kicked off, and this year’s opening night belongs to Danny Boyle.
His new film Ink had its world premiere today, Sep. 2, in the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema, kicking off the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, and it’s already generating serious awards buzz.
(Ink via Netflix)
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What Ink Is All About
Ink is a biographical drama about publisher Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the British newspaper The Sun in 1969 and how he transformed it into the country’s best-selling tabloid.
The film is adapted by James Graham, the Olivier Award-winning playwright behind Dear England and Sherwood, from his own Tony-nominated stage play of the same name.
Jack O’Connell stars as Larry Lamb, the Sun editor Murdoch put in charge of the paper’s dramatic makeover, with Guy Pearce playing Murdoch himself and Claire Foy rounding out the cast as Jules Davies.
Danny Boyle set the scene for the film himself, framing 1969 as the year humanity first walked on the moon and the same year Murdoch and Lamb launched a newspaper that would end up changing the world in its own way. He’s described the story as tracking a “cheeky, irreverent, daring” tabloid that challenged the establishment decades before the internet, social media and click bait even existed.
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A Big Moment for Danny Boyle
This is actually Danny Boyle’s first time competing at Venice, despite being one of Britain’s most decorated directors.
Best known for Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting and the 28 Days Later franchise, this marks his first non-franchise film since 2019’s Yesterday.
Speaking at Variety’s pre-opening party ahead of the premiere, he joked that when festival chief Alberto Barbera called to say Ink would open the festival, he thought Barbera was insane, calling it the oddest film to ever open Venice. Barbera, for his part, praised the pairing of an Oscar-winning director with a celebrated London playwright and three of British cinema’s most acclaimed actors as the reason he chose the film.
Jack O’Connell, who plays Lamb, spoke about working with Danny at the same event, describing him as a director with the rare ability to take audiences inside a world rather than just present one to them.
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Where and When You Can Watch
Ink is competing for the Golden Lion at Venice before heading to the Toronto International Film Festival for its North American premiere.
After the festival circuit, the film gets a limited theatrical release in the U.S. on Dec. 11, positioning it for an awards-qualifying run, before landing on Netflix on Jan. 8, 2027, in the U.S. and Latin America. StudioCanal will handle theatrical releases elsewhere.
Between Danny Boyle’s Venice debut, a stacked cast led by Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy and a story that feels eerily relevant to modern media chaos, Ink is shaping up to be one of the buzziest awards contenders of the fall season.
With the Golden Lion race and a Netflix release still ahead, this is a title worth keeping on your radar all the way through January.
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