Official Trailer for Danny Boyle's 'Ink' Pulls Back the Curtain on the Birth of Tabloid Journalism

Few newspapers have shaped British culture as loudly as The Sun, and few directors could make its origin story feel as restless as Danny Boyle. His new drama ‘Ink’ turns the paper’s chaotic early days into a fast-moving workplace thriller. Netflix has now put the film front and center with a full trailer.

The story began on the stage. James Graham’s play ‘Ink‘ ran in London’s West End in 2017 and reached Broadway in 2019, earning Tony recognition along the way. Graham adapted the screenplay himself, which means the film comes straight from the playwright who first dramatized the paper’s rise.

The new trailer runs 2 minutes and 23 seconds and is billed as the official look at the film. It stars Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy, and it frames the story as the work of visionaries and misfits who wanted a new kind of news, one built to give people exactly what they wanted. The tagline is ‘They broke the news.’

The footage drops viewers into a smoky newsroom and a crowd of reporters swarming a car outside, and the tone is loud and kinetic. Reviewers who have seen the film describe the opening stretch as playing like a heist movie as Larry Lamb assembles his crack team of journalists. That energy comes through in the trailer’s quick cuts.

The official trailer for INK. Starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, and Claire Foy. From Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle. A group of visionaries and misfits had an idea for a new kind of news — one that would give the people what they want and would change the face of the world we live in today. Based on the Tony Award-winning play of the same name. In theaters December 11 and on Netflix January 8 in the US and Latin America.
— Netflix (@netflix) November 10, 2026

‘Ink’ follows Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of The Sun, which marked his entry into the British newspaper industry. He recruits a former Daily Mail editor, Larry Lamb, to reshape a struggling broadsheet into a populist tabloid. According to coverage of the Venice premiere, the film depicts how the pair turned the paper into the highest-selling daily in the world within a year.

O’Connell plays Lamb, Pearce plays Murdoch, and Foy plays Jules Davies, a fictional composite of several reporters from that period at the paper. Netflix is giving broadly equal billing to the three leads. The supporting cast includes Blake Harrison, Patrick Kennedy, Angus Imrie and Brian Gleeson.

Boyle and O’Connell recently worked together on ’28 Years Later’ and its follow-up ’28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’, and the director was reportedly impressed enough to bring the actor back for this project. Pearce, meanwhile, joined the cast as Murdoch alongside O’Connell in August 2025. Boyle has said the film does not turn Murdoch into a monster, which suggests a more layered portrait than a straightforward villain story.

The crew includes cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler, editor Fin Oates and composer Daniel Pemberton, with production design by Gareth Pugh and Carson McColl. Tessa Ross, Michael Ellenberg and Tracey Seaward produce alongside Boyle, and Studiocanal fully financed the film.

The film opened the Venice Film Festival, where it reportedly earned a standing ovation of around 5 minutes, according to Deadline. Screen Daily called O’Connell a charming devil in the role and described the film as a crackling, seductive look at Lamb’s relationship with Murdoch. Other coverage has pointed to the performances of O’Connell and Pearce as potential awards-season talking points.

Boyle has also said the production had a siege mentality while making the film, according to a recent Deadline report from its Contenders event in London. That kind of pressure-cooker spirit seems to be baked into the finished product, at least judging by how the trailer plays.

‘Ink’ arrives in select theaters on Dec. 11, giving it a spot in the busy awards-season window. It then lands on Netflix in the United States and Latin America on Jan. 8, 2027, about 4 weeks later. Netflix holds the United States and Latin American distribution rights.

For fans of newsroom dramas, the trailer offers a loud, stylish preview of how tabloid journalism was born, with O’Connell, Pearce and Foy at the center of the story, and it gives audiences a clear sense of the pace Boyle is aiming for.