What the trailer and reviews reveal about Ink, the new film starring Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch

Within hours of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the highly anticipated Rupert Murdoch biopic Ink has been hailed by critics as “riveting”, and director Danny Boyle’s “best film in decades”.

The film, set in 1969, stars Australian actor Guy Pearce as Murdoch, and chronicles Murdoch’s acquisition of London newspaper The Sun, originally an unsuccessful broadsheet but purchased and relaunched as the now-infamous scandal sheet.

And while the audience in Venice got to see the whole movie, the rest of the world has been left to unpick the film’s trailer, which was released online as the curtain went up in Italy.

What the trailer reveals is that the film moves at a cracking pace, with the kind of street grit you would expect from a Danny Boyle film. So, is this 28 Headlines Later? Or maybe Tabloidspotting?

Adapted by James Graham from his own stage play of the same name, and dialled up to the max by Boyle’s characteristic direction, it seems to play more like – to borrow a title from another British filmmaker – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Tabloids.

And critically, the world’s most influential film voices seem to have embraced it. New York Magazine film critic Bilge Ebiri called it Boyle’s “best film in decades.”

“Boyle’s film is riveting and needling and leaves you feeling pretty awful, right up to a closing montage that connects Lamb’s and Murdoch’s legacy to the unregulated cacophony of today’s media and social media scenes, from Fox News to Facebook,” wrote Guy Lodge in Variety.

The Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney agreed. “Ink is a solid demonstration that if you want to give talky material pulse-pounding urgency, give it to Danny Boyle,” he wrote.

The film’s star – technically – is Jack O’Connell, who plays Larry Lamb, the Yorkshire-born editor of The Sun under Murdoch, and whose transformation of the newspaper, and media culture with it, drives the film.

But of course, all eyes – including Murdoch’s – are on Pearce, an actor best known for a trio of fictional personalities: Detective Exley in L.A. Confidential, the amnesiac Leonard Shelby in Christopher Nolan’s Memento and, perhaps inescapably, Australian TV’s beloved boy-next-door Mike Young in Neighbours.

In Ink, he plays Murdoch in his prime. And while Murdoch has not yet seen the film, Pearce did tell media in Venice he had been told by the Murdoch family that their elder patriarch was happy with his casting.

Speaking at a media conference ahead of the film’s premiere, Pearce said Murdoch’s daughter, Elisabeth, had told him: “Dad’s very happy that you’re playing him.” But, Pearce added: “He hadn’t seen the film at that point, so we’ll see.”

In addition to O’Connell and Pearce, the trailer also gives us our first look at The Crown star Claire Foy as Jules Davies, a reporter for The Sun. Though many of the personalities in the film are drawn from media history, Davies is a fictional character, based on various female reporters who worked on Fleet Street.

The trailer also confirms that the film will include the abduction and murder of Muriel McKay in 1969. McKay, the wife of Murdoch’s deputy Alick McKay, was mistaken for Murdoch’s wife Anna. McKay’s killers were convicted of her kidnapping and murder in 1970.

Boyle, here, is in complicated but comfortable territory. He knows how to deliver a strong biopic, which he did with Steve Jobs. He also knows how to package a fast-moving, energetic drama, as he did with films like Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire.

Murdoch’s story is one of astonishing global success. But as a figure, he, and his media empire, are divisive. Everyone, from pauper to prime minister, has an opinion on the man, and the multitude of deals which have shaped the world in which we live.

The play on which the film was based was produced in 2017 and 2019, with British stage actor Bertie Carvel in the role for both iterations. Carvel appears in the film, but in the role of Hugh Cudlipp, the editor-in-chief of rival newspaper, The Mirror.

Graham, who wrote both the play and the film, told media at the festival that Murdoch had attended both stage productions of the play on which the film was based, the London West End production in 2017 and the New York Broadway production in 2019.

“I remember he was very good at sort of not really giving anything away,” Graham said, when asked about Murdoch’s reaction to the play. Graham noted that Murdoch was particularly pleased by a scene which leaned into the “dirt and the steam and the filth that used to go into making a paper on a daily basis”.

Boyle said at the press conference that the film would not “monsterise” Murdoch. “I think it’s because he represented at the time a breath of fresh air in what was a very rigid British society,” Boyle said. “He offered a kind of freedom with a different voice, really.”

Ink will be released in the US in December, and on Netflix in January 2027. It is scheduled for release in Australian cinemas on January 7.

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Michael Idato is the culture editor-at-large of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.AdvertisementAdvertisement