Danny Boyle’s Ink Puts Jack O’Connell and Guy Pearce on Opposite Sides of the Newsroom Desk

Jack O’Connell plays Larry Lamb and Guy Pearce plays Rupert Murdoch in Ink, the new Danny Boyle film whose trailer Netflix published on November 10. It is a pairing that gives the story its center before you know much else about the cast. One man has to make the paper. The other owns it. Netflix’s first-look photograph puts them across a restaurant table, a quieter setting than the newspaper business the film is about to enter.

From a stage play to Boyle’s camera

James Graham’s play supplies the source material. Netflix describes the film as a story about a group trying to invent a kind of news that gives readers what they want. That sets up a more interesting question than whether the finished newspaper becomes a success. Who decides what the readers want, and what happens when the people making it follow that idea? The trailer is an introduction to Boyle’s version, rather than a verdict on how it handles the history.

The casting keeps the two leading roles easy to follow. O’Connell is Larry Lamb, Pearce is Murdoch and Claire Foy plays Jules Davies. Netflix names the three in its current cast announcement. It does not provide a complete role-by-role account of the film in the same article, so there is room for the production to show more as release approaches. Boyle comes to it with films including Slumdog Millionaire and Steve Jobs behind him. The attraction here is seeing that director work with a story already built for actors to talk, argue and bargain in rooms.

Two dates, with a territory attached

The film is due in selected theaters on December 11, 2026. Netflix gives January 8, 2027 for streaming in the United States and Latin America. That last part is worth keeping attached to the date. A Netflix release in those territories does not establish the same January opening for every subscriber elsewhere. Check the listing for your region as the release gets closer.

There is a different kind of adaptation in our recent look at The Virgin Suicides, where Sofia Coppola brought Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel to the screen. Ink starts from a play. The interest is in what a film camera can add to material that already has a life onstage: a different distance from a face, a cut to someone listening, or a room seen from the other side. Those are things to look for in the trailer without pretending they settle the finished film. For now, the confirmed pieces are the three announced roles, Boyle’s direction and the two release windows Netflix has given viewers.