A biopic of the media tycoon and Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, starring Guy Pearce and directed by the “Slumdog Millionaire” filmmaker Danny Boyle, will compete for the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, organizers announced on Thursday.
Boyle’s festival entry, “Ink,” will be up against new movies from the two-time best picture nominee Martin McDonagh, the German titan Werner Herzog, the Academy Award-winning actor Casey Affleck and the acclaimed Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong, among others. Twenty films will compete at the 83rd convening of the festival, which is set to take place Sept. 2 through Sept. 12.
“Ink,” adapted from a 2017 play, is set in 1969 and stars Pearce as a young Murdoch who is trying to purchase The Sun and remake it into the incendiary British tabloid that will help start his media empire. Jack O’Connell (“Sinners” and “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple”) co-stars as Larry Lamb, the editor whom Murdoch hires to lead the publication.
McDonagh’s new film, “Wild Horse Nine,” follows two C.I.A. operatives — played by John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell — who become entangled with the locals while on a misadventure to Easter Island in 1973. It is Rockwell’s third film with McDonagh after “Seven Psychopaths” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and it follows the director’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which received nine Academy Award nominations in 2023.
Other films to compete on Lido island in Venice include Lance Oppenheim’s “Primetime,” starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, the host and creative force behind the TV show “To Catch a Predator”; Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard,” featuring sisters Kate and Rooney Mara as inseparable twins on a fantastical quest for true love; Affleck’s “Company,” which stars Nick Nolte, Adelaide Clemens and Ben Mendelsohn in a set of intertwined stories told at a holiday party in 1975; Lee’s “Possible Love,” about two married couples who lead opposite lives; and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Look Back,” a manga adaptation about the friendship between two girls who dream of becoming manga artists.
The actress and filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal will lead the jury that selects the Golden Lion winner. Outside of the main competition, the festival will also feature the premiere of new films from Paul Schrader and Takashi Miike, and an Alex Gibney documentary about Elon Musk.
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