The 83rd Venice Film Festival got off to a rousing start Wednesday evening with the warmly received world premiere of Danny Boyle’s propulsive Rupert Murdoch drama Ink from Netflix and Studiocanal.
As the lights came up inside Venice’s Sala Grande, with stars Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy seated alongside their director, the black-tie crowd rose for a four-minute standing ovation in a warmly-received moment. After the cast exited, there was a bit of drama near the front of the theater as an unidentified man was suffering from a medical emergency and personnel were called in for help. As of press time, his condition was unclear.
Set in 1969, Ink chronicles Murdoch’s acquisition of the struggling British newspaper The Sun and his recruitment of editor Larry Lamb to reinvent it as a populist tabloid capable of overtaking the dominant Daily Mirror. Pearce plays Murdoch, with O’Connell as Lamb and Foy as Jules Davies. The film traces the creation of a formula built around sensationalism, celebrity, sex and an instinctive feel for readers’ baser instincts — an approach that would transform The Sun into Britain’s bestselling newspaper and presage many of the forces that later reshaped global media in the Murdoch model.
