The James Graham adaptation chronicles the rise of Rupert Murdoch’s ‘The Sun’ and the journalists willing to do almost anything to give readers “what they want”

NEED TO KNOW

• Ink tells the story of Rupert Murdoch’s transformation of The Sun into a groundbreaking tabloid in 1969 London
• The film explores sensationalism, celebrity and controversy as Murdoch and his team redefine the newspaper industry
• Directed by Danny Boyle, Ink premieres in theaters Dec. 11, 2026, and streams on Netflix starting Jan. 8, 2027

Guy Pearce, Jack O’Connell and Claire Foy find out what it takes to build a tabloid empire from scratch in Ink.

Netflix has released the first trailer for the biographical drama, which arrives in theaters on Dec. 11. Directed by Danny Boyle, the film stars Pearce, 58, as Rupert Murdoch, the Australian businessman and newspaper magnate who becomes the new owner of The Sun.

O’Connell, 36, stars as Larry Lamb, the new editor of The Sun and former editor for the Daily Mail, while Foy, 42, plays Jules Davies, a fictional reporter for The Sun who is an amalgam of the female reporters who worked on London’s famous Fleet Street at the time.

The trailer introduces the newspaper crew as they brainstorm what will make their up-and-coming paper stand out.

“What do you really want?” Larry asks. “What gets you going? What floats your boat?”

The answers are pretty simple as the newsroom weighs in with smoking and drinking, TV and “murders, violence,” before Larry offers a more diplomatic suggestion: “Let’s keep it optimistic.”

Based on James Graham’s Tony-winning play of the same name, Ink heads back to 1969 London to tell the story of how Murdoch transformed a struggling newspaper into a tabloid powerhouse.

Set against the competitive world of Fleet Street, Murdoch purchases the failing Sun and recruits Lamb, a working-class editor with a very different idea of what a newspaper can be.

In the trailer, the paper’s new mission is laid out plainly: “We want our readers to feel alive when they reach for their paper in the morning.”

That vision quickly gets a lot more ambitious — and a lot more chaotic — as Murdoch and Larry lay out their plans for shaking up the newspaper world.

“Mr. Murdoch, this is not something that’s been done before,” says Larry.

“Larry, Great Britain is crying out for something here — something dangerous, something fun!” Murdoch says while slamming his fists on the dinner table, sending food flying off his plate and his drink splashing out of his glass. “Naturally, we could change the game.”

Lamb then assembles an unlikely group of reporters and sets out to reinvent the paper, embracing sensationalism, celebrity, sex, sports and controversy in a bid to capture the public’s attention. That means giving readers exactly what they want — or at least what the newspaper thinks they want.

“We want stories, gossip. Any scandal is fair game,” Larry says.

But as the paper’s ambitions grow, so do questions about how far its journalists should go to get a story. The trailer cuts between the printing press, lavish dinner parties, trains, home invasions and kidnappings, showing just how far the new tabloid is willing to go.

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“Just because you can make something public doesn’t mean you should,” Jules warns.

“Run it,” Larry says as the trailer wraps up.

Graham adapted his own play for the screen, while Boyle, the 69-year-old Academy Award-winning director who also worked on Slumdog Millionaire and 28 Days Later, also serves as a producer.

Ink will open in select U.S. theaters on Dec. 11, 2026, before streaming on Netflix on Jan. 8, 2027. The film will make its world premiere Sept. 2 as the opening film of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.

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