Danny Boyle's new Netflix movie looks like it could be a sensation
Ink dramatises a story I didn't expect
Well, if this doesn't have all the ingredients to be a banger, what does? Netflix has finally given us a proper trailer for Ink, its upcoming Danny Boyle film based on an award-winning play, and it looks absolutely terrific. Telling the story of The Sun, one of the UK's most popular and controversial newspapers, it promises a whole heap of interesting moments.
Netflix is giving broadly equal billing to three stars for the movie – Jack O’Connell as Larry Lamb (the editor who changed everything for the paper), Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch (the world-famous magnate who bought it) and Claire Foy as Jules Davies (a more complicated character, as I'll explain). They all look to be in pretty magnetic form, too.
If it follows the play quite closely (and James Graham is adapting his own work, so you'd think it probably will), the movie will open in late 1969, as Australian Ruper Murdoch looks to buy The Sun and revamp is as part of his big plans to become a global media magnate. He approaches Larry Lamb to be the paper's new editor-in-chief and gives him a mandate to tear up the rules.
The third major player here is Jules Davies, but she's complicated; rather than a single real-life professional from the true story, she's instead an amalgamation of a few different female reporters from the paper's tumultuous history, showing that it wasn't quite as much of a boys' club as the famous Page 3 might make one think.
Of course, there's no point pretending that The Sun isn't without its controversies, with some observers over the years blaming it for bringing down the tone and standards of mainstream reporting, among other things, and the film is sure to touch on that sort of area quite heavily. In fact, from the trailer it remarkably even looks like it paints the Rupert Murdoch of the time as being concerned about its reputation.
Most interesting is the verve and style that Boyle's used to film the story, which makes it look like his zippiest and most interesting work in a good while (as a certified 28 Years Later hater, here). It's a big release for Netflix, as a result of all this – heading to cinemas on 11 December this year before only hitting streaming on 8 January 2027.
