The fall festival season is inching closer, with an announcement from NYFF expected today as well. In the meantime, things kicked off this morning with the major European launchpad making waves.
Danny Boyle’s “Ink” will open the 83rd Venice Film Festival on September 3. It will be playing in competition, which must be a slight relief for those who believed this year’s edition of the fest would be lacking in big titles.
“Ink” is Boyle’s Rupert Murdoch biopic, starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, and Claire Foy, which has yet to lock in U.S. distribution and was previously eyeing a 2027 release. That’s what Studiocanal told the crowd at CinemaCon.
The film, adapted by acclaimed playwright James Graham, from his own stage play, is centered on the meteoric rise of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Pearce stars as the media mogul. In addition to Pearce, O’Connell stars as Larry Lamb, the former editor of The Sun. Foy is set to play an ambitious editor and Lamb’s colleague at The Sun.
Describing the film, Boyle said: “1969 – the year we first walked on the moon – and the year Rupert Murdoch and Larry Lamb launched a newspaper that was to change the world far more. Long before Fox News, click bait, and Truth Social; decades before Twitter, Facebook, Google and Only Fans, these two men created a new tabloid which against all the odds became the biggest selling newspaper in the world. Cheeky, irreverent, daring: The super soaraway Sun challenged the establishment and remade our world for the modern era. A script by James Graham I felt compelled and privileged to make.”
Boyle is coming off the strong reviews “28 Years Later” earned in the summer of 2025, and “Ink” seems to mark his return to baitier awards material. Boyle’s 30-year career has seen him direct such films as “28 Days Later,” “Trainspotting,” “127 Hours,” and “Slumdog Millionaire.”
As for Venice, I can confirm some big titles will be skipping the fest this year, including Joel Coen’s “Jack of Spades,” David Fincher’s “Cliff Booth,” Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning,” Tony Gilroy’s “Behemoth!,” and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “Digger.” A source tells me this is just part of the new normal: “studio policies (the same ones for Cannes) see European festivals as no longer an appealing destination for U.S. films.”
Why aren’t they so appealing anymore? This same person tells me it’s because “studios can’t control reviews” once a film premieres at Cannes or Venice, and that “it’s much easier to do so at North American festivals.”
“Coyote vs. Acme,” came very close to never getting released, yet, it almost doubled the weekend box office of Ridley Scott’s much-pricier “The Dog Stars.”