Danny Boyle's Netflix Drama 'Ink' Set to Open Venice Film Festival

Netflix will open the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 2 with "Ink," a historical media drama directed by Danny Boyle that chronicles the aggressive rise of British tabloid journalism under Rupert Murdoch.

The film features Jack O'Connell as Larry Lamb, the editor Murdoch appointed in 1969 to overhaul The Sun. Under Lamb's stewardship, the newspaper transformed the British print landscape through provocative, populist coverage, including the introduction of its infamous Page 3 feature.

O'Connell, whose recent credits include the upcoming "Sinners" and the "28 Years Later" franchise, detailed Lamb's relentless commercial focus in an interview with Variety on Instagram. "His prerogative is very simple," O'Connell said. "He's fixated on sales numbers and whatever it's going to take to keep that figure rising. He'll stop at nothing, and that means bending the rules. It was very naughty."

Boyle noted that the project deliberately avoids reducing Murdoch to a caricature, choosing instead to examine the consumer demand that propelled the publication. "One of the dangers with doing anything about Rupert Murdoch is that everybody monster-izes him," Boyle told Variety on Instagram, "as though he's forced everybody to read The Sun! We are all responsible for this."

## Festival Strategy

Landing the opening night berth at Venice provides Netflix with a high-profile platform to launch "Ink" into the competitive autumn awards corridor. The streaming service regularly leverages the Lido to inaugurate campaigns for prestige European and British productions, betting that Boyle's kinetic style will draw early critical momentum.