Film · London
Fleet Street Opens Venice: Danny Boyle's 'Ink' Premieres 2 September
Boyle's drama about Murdoch and Larry Lamb launching The Sun — born as a play at the Almeida — opens the 83rd Venice Film Festival and competes for the Golden Lion.
The film chosen to open the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on 2 September is a London story through and through. Danny Boyle's 'Ink' dramatises 1969 Fleet Street: Rupert Murdoch buying a failing broadsheet and, with editor Larry Lamb, relaunching it as The Sun — the tabloid that rewired British media. Jack O'Connell plays Lamb, Guy Pearce plays Murdoch, and Claire Foy co-stars.
The material started life on a London stage. James Graham's play 'Ink' premiered at the Almeida in Islington in 2017 before transferring to the West End, and Graham has adapted his own script for the screen. Nine years on, the same story walks out onto the Lido as the festival's curtain-raiser — and it is not just a ceremonial slot: the film screens in the main competition, contending for the Golden Lion in front of a jury led by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
A play that opened in an Islington theatre now opens the oldest film festival in the world.
Netflix holds US and Latin American rights, with a select US theatrical run set for 11 December before streaming in the new year — so the awards machinery is already assembled behind it. The British-Irish presence in competition runs deeper too: Martin McDonagh's 'Wild Horse Nine', backed by Film4, screens alongside it.
For anyone who makes things in this city, the pipeline on show is the point: a script workshopped in N1, a story set in EC4, a premiere on the world's biggest launchpad. The festival runs 2–12 September; expect 'Ink' on London screens in awards season.