Danny Boyle’s ‘Ink’ Trailer Reveals Guy Pearce and Jack O’Connell’s Wild Tabloid Takeover

Danny Boyle has built a career out of jolting audiences with kinetic, high stakes storytelling, from the frantic energy of ‘Trainspotting’ to the survival horror of ’28 Days Later’. His latest project pulls that same intensity into a very different arena, the cutthroat world of British newspaper publishing.

The film centers on the real life origin story of one of the most talked about media empires in modern history. Ink centers around Rupert Murdoch’s high stakes transformation of The Sun newspaper, with the story picking up in 1969 when Murdoch acquired the struggling paper and partnered with editor Larry Lamb to turn it into a sensationalist publishing juggernaut.

That backdrop is exactly what fans got their first real look at when DiscussingFilm shared the debut trailer for the movie, confirming Jack O’Connell and Guy Pearce lead the cast and that the film follows the two men who relaunched ‘The Sun’ into the UK’s most influential and infamous tabloid outlet. The account also noted the film releases January 8 on Netflix and in UK theaters.

O’Connell stars as the newspaper’s editor Larry Lamb, with Pearce playing Rupert Murdoch, while Claire Foy rounds out the cast as Jules Davies. The film is based on the Tony nominated stage play by James Graham, who also wrote the screenplay. The footage shows reporters at ‘The Sun’ brainstorming ways to boost viewership, including leaning into more violent stories and adding sexual content to the paper’s pages.

Boyle himself described the story’s cultural weight in a statement, saying long before Fox News, clickbait and Truth Social, and decades before Twitter, Facebook, Google and OnlyFans, these two men created a tabloid that against all odds became the biggest selling newspaper in the world. That framing positions ‘Ink’ as less of a straightforward period piece and more of an origin story for the media landscape audiences live in today.

The project already has serious industry momentum behind it. ‘Ink’ will have its world premiere as the opening film of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, where it will compete for the Golden Lion, before a limited US theatrical run and its eventual Netflix debut. Even Murdoch’s own family has weighed in, with Pearce revealing during Venice press that Murdoch’s daughter Elizabeth told him her father was pleased with the casting, though according to The Hollywood Reporter he had not seen the finished film at that point.

With awards season buzz already building and a release date locked for early January, ‘Ink’ looks poised to be one of the more provocative biopics of the coming year. What do you think Guy Pearce’s take on Rupert Murdoch will reveal about the man behind the media empire that changed the world.