George Clooney and Amal Lead the Red Carpet at Venice’s Ink Premiere

Foy plays Jules Davies, a fictional newspaper executive at The Sun. She told reporters that working in the world of 1960s tabloid journalism felt “really intoxicating” and that she was jealous of reporters because they had power over what people read and believed.

That idea gives Foy’s casting a useful pressure point. Jules is not a real newsroom figure in the film’s account, but she sits inside a real institutional story. Foy has to carry the invented character while the movie’s historical names gather around her. The red dress made that job visible before the film had even started for most audiences.

Guy Pearce, who plays Murdoch, and Jack O’Connell, who plays former editor Larry Lamb, joined Foy on the carpet. The Sun identified the same principal cast and said the film is directed by Boyle. The Daily Mail reported that Pearce contacted Murdoch through his daughter Elisabeth, who said her father was pleased that Pearce had been cast, although Murdoch had not seen the finished film at that point.

Photos: Presidential Communications Office · Public domain · source; Quejaytee · CC BY 4.0 · source

Danny Boyle’s Film Reaches Back to The Sun’s 1969 Takeover

Ink is set around Murdoch’s takeover of The Sun in 1969. Boyle said Murdoch represented “a breath of fresh air” in a rigid British society at that time, according to the Daily Mail. He described the story as beginning with something fun and different that challenged an established order.

The film comes from a stage play that Murdoch himself reportedly saw twice. That detail gives the premiere an unusual edge: the subject of the story has encountered its theatrical version, while the new screen version now arrives with Pearce wearing his face and voice as part of the performance.

The production is also asking viewers to look at the workers behind a newspaper’s transformation. Lamb was a real editor, while Foy’s Jules Davies is fictional. One represents the newsroom history the film is drawing from; the other gives the story room to imagine how power looked from another desk.

Photos: Presidential Communications Office · Public domain · source; FiesolanaNYC · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Ink Has a Date With UK Cinemas and Netflix

The Daily Mail reported that Ink will open in UK cinemas on January 8. In the United States, Netflix will stream it on the same day, after a limited theatrical run beginning December 11. The Venice premiere therefore functions as an early public introduction, but not yet as a verdict on the movie itself.

For now, what the evening offered was a precise picture of its people: Clooney in a tuxedo, Amal in black, Foy in red, and a film carrying a newspaper’s history onto a festival carpet. The last image may belong to George, standing among the photographers with a camera in his hands, briefly becoming part of the press corps that Ink is about.