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In 1969, Rupert Murdoch sees an opportunity inside a failing British newspaper. Larry Lamb sees a newsroom he can rebuild around one blunt instruction: give people what they want.
Ink follows the acquisition and transformation of The Sun, the tabloid that would challenge the established Daily Mirror and grow into Britain’s bestselling newspaper. The story is not simply about printing headlines. It is about ambition, class, competition and the moment news began moving closer to the aggressive attention economy audiences recognise today.
Guy Pearce plays Murdoch, the publisher willing to wager money and reputation on a struggling title. Jack O’Connell plays Lamb, the editor responsible for turning that wager into a newspaper people will buy every morning.
Together, they assemble a group of journalists, outsiders and professional misfits prepared to break Fleet Street’s accepted rules.
A newspaper built as a challenge
Murdoch does not acquire The Sun to preserve what already exists. The paper needs a new identity and a clear opponent.
That opponent is the Daily Mirror, the dominant popular newspaper of the period. Beating it requires more than reporting the same stories with different headlines. Lamb and his team need to understand what readers feel the establishment is refusing to give them.
Their answer is a tabloid that is faster, louder, cheekier and less respectful of the boundaries separating public information from private appetite.
The strategy creates immediate energy because the team begins as an underdog. They are trying to build circulation against a rival with greater reach and confidence. Each increase in sales appears to prove that their instincts are correct.
Success, however, introduces the question at the centre of Ink: if readers buy something, does that make the decision to publish it right?
Larry Lamb enters the newsroom
Jack O’Connell’s Larry Lamb is the operational force of the story. Murdoch can provide the opportunity, but Lamb must create the paper issue by issue.
He needs reporters who will chase stories others overlook and editors willing to present those stories with maximum impact. He also needs to turn a group of competing personalities into a newsroom capable of meeting a daily deadline.
The film’s official description calls them visionaries and misfits. Both words matter. “Visionaries” reflects their ability to recognise a neglected audience. “Misfits” suggests people with little interest in protecting the traditions of the industry they are entering.
Their outsider energy may make the newsroom exciting, but it can also weaken restraint. When every day is measured against circulation numbers, yesterday’s successful provocation becomes today’s minimum requirement.
Rupert Murdoch’s larger wager
Guy Pearce plays Murdoch before his name became inseparable from a global media empire.
Ink presents him at a formative point: a publisher attempting to reshape the British market by understanding the commercial power of popular dissatisfaction. The Sun is not only another acquisition. It becomes evidence that attention can be converted into influence.
Murdoch and Lamb need each other, but they do not necessarily carry the same risk. Lamb’s decisions appear on the front page. Murdoch controls the business that rewards those decisions.
That relationship gives the story a tension beyond the battle with the Mirror. The editor must determine how much freedom he truly possesses, while the proprietor must decide whether any editorial boundary is worth preserving if crossing it sells more papers.
Jules Davies and the people affected by the experiment
Claire Foy plays Jules Davies. Official materials identify the character but have deliberately revealed little about her full position in the story.
That makes it important not to invent a biography or assign her decisions before the film has premiered. What can be said is that Foy joins Pearce and O’Connell in the central cast, placing Jules close to the human consequences of the newspaper’s transformation.
Ink needs perspectives beyond Murdoch and Lamb. Without them, the film could mistake professional excitement for moral neutrality. The people working inside the newsroom—and those turned into its subjects—can reveal what circulation figures leave out.
From popular journalism to the attention economy
Ink takes place decades before social media, online advertising and algorithmic recommendations. Its conflict nevertheless feels current.
The Sun’s creators ask what people want, then design news around the answer. Modern digital platforms perform a similar calculation continuously, measuring clicks, viewing time, reactions and shares.
The methods have changed, but the pressure is familiar. Information must compete for attention, and material that provokes a strong reaction often travels farther than material that asks for patience.
The film’s historical value lies in showing that this conflict did not begin with the internet. The technology accelerated it. Murdoch and Lamb were working with printing presses, deadlines and street sales, but they were already discovering how powerfully outrage, humour and sensation could shape public attention.
Based on James Graham’s play
James Graham adapted Ink from his own Tony-nominated stage play. Danny Boyle directs the film, which runs for 116 minutes.
The move from theatre to cinema creates new possibilities. A stage production can focus tightly on language and performance. Film can open the newsroom, printing process and streets around it, showing how a decision made at an editorial desk becomes a physical object distributed across the country.
Boyle’s energetic style appears suited to the velocity of daily journalism. The challenge will be maintaining that excitement without turning the newspaper’s ethical consequences into background detail.
Daniel Pemberton composed the music, Alwin H. Küchler served as cinematographer and Fin Oates edited the film.
Why Ink opens the Venice Film Festival
Ink receives its world premiere on September 2 as the opening film of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, where it is also competing for the Golden Lion.
That premiere should not be confused with a general cinema or streaming release. StudioCanal has announced theatrical distribution across several territories, but viewers should wait for confirmed local dates rather than assuming the festival screening makes the film immediately available worldwide.
Until the completed film has been publicly assessed, Flicklevel is treating Ink as a story preview, not a review.
Flicklevel story outlook
Ink is built around a victory whose consequences extend far beyond the people pursuing it.
Murdoch and Lamb want to defeat a rival newspaper. To do that, they create a product more responsive to popular desire and more willing to challenge the establishment. The closer they move toward success, the harder it becomes to separate giving readers a voice from exploiting whatever will hold their attention.
That is what makes the story relevant in 2026. The printing presses belong to another era, but the argument over who controls attention—and what they are willing to do with that control—has only become more urgent.
Ink has its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on September 2, 2026.
Official sources: Venice International Film Festival – Ink | StudioCanal – Ink