The next major story about media may not come from a documentary about algorithms, but from a film set in 1969. Ink, directed by Danny Boyle, places Rupert Murdoch, Larry Lamb, and the transformation of The Sun at the center of a story that will open the 83rd Venice Film Festival before moving into theaters and then onto Netflix in the United States and Latin America. On paper, the subject belongs to the past: a popular newspaper, a British newsroom, a fight to sell copies. In reality, it speaks directly to our own time, when information has again become a battlefield between spectacle, speed, power, and platforms.

The new momentum around the film lies in its cultural launch. Netflix has confirmed a selective theatrical release on December 11, 2026, followed by a streaming debut on January 8, 2027 in the relevant territories. The Venice Film Festival, meanwhile, presents Ink as its opening film in competition, with a 116-minute running time, a cast led by Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, and Claire Foy, and a screenplay by James Graham based on his play. The film is therefore not merely a magnate biopic: it is becoming one of the first major signals of awards season.

A Historical Film Looking at the Present

Danny Boyle has never been a static filmmaker. From Trainspotting to Slumdog Millionaire, his cinema loves accelerating systems, bodies thrown into velocity, and societies changing too quickly for characters to keep their innocence intact. Ink seems built for that energy. The film returns to the moment when Murdoch, played by Guy Pearce, and editor Larry Lamb, played by Jack O’Connell, turned a struggling title into a popular machine capable of reshaping the British press market.

This story could have been treated as a lesson in media heritage. But Boyle and Graham hold far more dangerous material. The story of The Sun is not only the story of a newspaper that understood the public’s desires better than its competitors. It is also the story of a formula: simplify, shock, personalize, provoke, sell. Social networks did not invent that logic; they amplified it. The tabloid taught information to behave like an emotional product before the feed became the dominant screen.

Netflix Chooses the Theater Before the Algorithm

The release plan is as revealing as the subject. Netflix could have treated Ink as a prestige catalogue drama, launching it directly on its homepage in the middle of winter. The decision to take the film through theaters gives it another status. It recognizes that certain cultural objects need a public ritual: festival, reviews, conversation, potential awards, and only then home viewing. For a film about the birth of a mass medium, that trajectory is almost ironic. The work first leaves the solitary logic of streaming to join the old collective ceremony of cinema.

This choice also responds to a commercial reality. Platforms know that a film’s value no longer comes only from hours watched. It comes from its ability to create a durable image, support an awards campaign, and give a streaming brand the credibility of a studio. Ink checks several boxes: an Oscar-winning director, a political subject without being an election film, a strong British cast, a prestigious theatrical origin, and a universal question about the power to narrate the world.

Murdoch Without Caricature, Lamb Without Erasure

The first look published by Vanity Fair emphasizes a decisive point: Danny Boyle does not want to reduce Murdoch to a simple villain. That choice may surprise, because Murdoch’s name already carries a global political and media charge. But it is artistically more fertile. Showing a figure at the moment he is forming allows the film to observe ambition before it becomes empire, instinct before it becomes system, and strategy before it produces its consequences.

The film also appears to restore Larry Lamb to a central place. That matters, because media revolutions are never only the work of owners. They are born in newsrooms, in the way a front page is chosen, in the way readers are addressed, in the hierarchy of scandal, and in the creation of a recognizable voice. Jack O’Connell has often excelled at characters marked by social tension, anger, and fragility. In Ink, he can embody the human craftsman of a machine that grows beyond him.

Why This Film Arrives at the Right Time

In 2026, audiences live inside a permanent crisis of trust. Traditional media seek subscribers, platforms capture attention, creators become their own channels, and artificial intelligence further blurs the origin of images and texts. In that context, returning to the modern beginnings of the tabloid is a way to trace the root. Before the algorithm, there was already the idea that attention could be manufactured, excited, held, and monetized.

The potential success of Ink will therefore depend on its courage. If it merely tells the story of an entrepreneur’s cunning and a newsroom’s energy, it will remain a strong period film. If it shows how a new media grammar changed our relationship with truth, it will become far more contemporary. The tabloid did not die with paper. It moved into optimized headlines, short videos, notifications, recycled controversies, and personalities turned into products of reaction.

The Film’s French and European Route

The project also has an important European dimension. StudioCanal financed the film and retains several release territories, including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other markets. This is a reminder that prestige cinema now circulates through complex alliances: Italian festivals, European financing and sales, American and Latin American rights at Netflix, theatrical exploitation before streaming. Behind a film about a press industry that invents a new economy of attention, there is already another cultural economy, global and fragmented.

That is precisely what makes Ink interesting for B-EMPIRE. The film sits where culture, business, and power touch. It tells the story of an industry that understands a narrative can be worth a fortune if it knows how to provoke the right desire at the right moment. The difference today is that this desire is no longer sold only at newsstands. It is sold through subscriptions, festival prestige, global campaigns, and viral conversation.

A Printed Mirror for the Digital Age

If Danny Boyle succeeds, Ink will not only be a film about Rupert Murdoch. It will be a film about the permanent temptation to give the public what it wants, even when that desire damages the common conversation. It will ask a simple and formidable question: who changes the world more, the person who controls information or the person who understands how to make it irresistible?

The answer now belongs to Venice, theaters, and Netflix. But the interest is already clear. By returning to the modern birth of the tabloid, Ink speaks to our saturated present. It reminds us that every media revolution begins with a promise of proximity and ends by revealing an architecture of power. Paper turned yellow. The digital feed does not. It forgets faster, which sometimes makes it even more dangerous.

Sources

• Vanity Fair – First Look: Danny Boyle Didn’t Want to Make Rupert Murdoch a Villain in Ink, August 25, 2026.
• Netflix Tudum – Ink Prints the Legend of Larry Lamb and Rupert Murdoch, August 10, 2026.
• La Biennale di Venezia – Ink, Venezia 83 Competition.
• Screen Daily – Netflix snaps up Danny Boyle’s Ink for the US and Latin America, July 17, 2026.