Netflix wants the “ink” to dry on its Oscar prospects.
Danny Boyle made his first trip to Venice with “Ink,” his adaptation of James Graham’s stage sensation, which opened the 83rd edition in competition before moving through Telluride and Toronto, with the streamer giving it a December theatrical release and a January streaming date.
The early temperature is reading warm. “Ink” drew a four-minute standing ovation on opening night in Venice, and the reactions filtering out of Telluride have been buzzing across the mountains, the kind of enthusiasm and respect a Netflix campaign is built to amplify.
The subject is an origin myth of modern media: Rupert Murdoch’s 1969 acquisition of a dying tabloid called The Sun and the rapid transformation that followed. Graham, adapting his own Tony-nominated play, approaches the story with the mechanics of a heist. Boyle supplies the velocity.
The central question is not simply how Murdoch built a newspaper. It is how two men helped invent the modern attention economy that shapes all of our lives today.
