The UK premiere of Ink at the BFI London Film Festival wasn’t just a screening—it was a confrontation with the past, and a warning for the present.
Jack O’Connell isn’t just acting in Ink — he’s standing on the front lines of a cultural reckoning. The film’s UK premiere at the 70th BFI London Film Festival wasn’t just another red carpet moment. It was the first time Danny Boyle’s adaptation of James Graham’s stage play reached its native audience, exactly a month after its Venice debut.
O’Connell, who plays Larry Lamb, the ambitious editor who helped turn The Sun into Britain’s biggest-selling paper, said he expected the reaction to be different here. “I expect the difference to be palpable,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s a London film. If it doesn’t work here, it’s not going to work anywhere.” That line wasn’t bravado, it was a test of authenticity.
The story is rooted in 1969 Fleet Street, where Rupert Murdoch, portrayed by Guy Pearce, acquired a failing tabloid and reshaped British journalism with populist fury and far-right reporting. O’Connell didn’t paint Lamb as a villain. “I think he was just perhaps overly ambitious,” he said. “His obsession was newspapers.
He broke rules. It wasn’t victimless. But I don’t consider him an out-and-out bad guy.” Pearce, meanwhile, admitted he’d like to meet the real Murdoch over brunch. Liz Murdoch reportedly approved his casting, though he acknowledged the mogul might watch and mutter, “Eugh!
Jesus Christ, what were they thinking?” Still, Pearce believes the film will resonate in the capital. Boyle, whose career spans Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, and the 28 Years Later series, sees Ink as more than a biopic. “You can argue about whether they introduced this entirely or whether they nurtured something that was latent within us,” he said.
“But it is the beginnings of the attention economy, of the clickbait economy, of the ‘What’s next? Swipe, move on.’ It’s the very beginnings of it there, the beginnings of the fire, and now it’s a bushfire that’s all around us, everywhere.” Graham, the playwright behind the original stage work, echoed that sentiment.
He described Ink as deeply British, not just in setting but in spirit. “No other country in the world has had its newspapers on one street with all the restaurants and bars and culture,” he said. “The richness of that and the seduction of that, but also the ugliness of that specificity, really appeals to people across the world.” He likened Murdoch and Lamb’s rise from the worst-selling paper in England to a local pub team beating Real Madrid.
O’Connell, who’s worked with Boyle on the 28 Years Later films, joked that the director has gone quiet about their next project together. But he confirmed they’re “inseparable.” Asked which film from this year he’d have liked to join, he coyly named Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine. The festival runs through October 18.
And now, the real screening begins.
Be the first to comment
Join the argument. No password, just your email or a passkey.