“Ink” has not dried yet.
The Danny Boyle-directed adaptation of the celebrated stage play that charts the formation and rise of the British tabloid The Sun is headed to Netflix later this year in the United States, but before then, “Ink” is screening as part of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
In the film, Jack O’Connell, who recently starred in the two new “28 Years Later” movies for Boyle, plays editor Larry Lamb and Guy Pearce is Rupert Murdoch, the Australian magnate who becomes the Sun’s new owner.
But how do you tap into these well-known, modern-day personalities? (The real-life Lamb died in 2000 at the age of 70; Murdoch of course is still alive at the ripe old age of 95.)
O’Connell told Casey Loving at TheWrap’s studio at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival that he would have conversations with Boyle about who Lamb was in the lead-up to production. “He said something about how all these little sins eventually coming home to roost – all these little sins that you accumulate over the time,” O’Connell explained. “He also said that it’s Larry’s obsession with this newspaper, with the sales board – it’s that obsession that, as an audience, you’ll invest in. That was massive to hear that from the director saying, Okay, there’s your focal point, that’s your destination. I got that information early on and that provided a real a real target.”
For Pearce, he discussed with Boyle who Murdoch has become, what people think of him and “the scandals that he’s been through and the effect that he’s had on the media in recent years.” While he incorporated those elements, he was more focused on a different part of Murdoch’s trajectory.
At the heart of Pearce’s performance was “what Murdoch was wanting in this early stage.”
“To get a sense of who Rupert Murdoch was back in ’69 in this early stage, and we talked about his anti-establishment with the British establishment and the effect of that establishment and the way in which it was dictating to the public. Rupert, I think, naturally had an eye on what he thought the public actually wanted, and came from that direction instead,” said Pearce.
“And the simple idea that a paper should be informative but also entertaining. It shouldn’t just be dry and dull – that establishment kept that belief going in the UK. Danny and I are trying to understand what Murdoch brought by trying to shake that up. We had primarily had conversations about that.”
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