Danny Boyle's Ink, with Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch in the year he bought The Sun, opened the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on Wednesday night as the first of 21 films competing for the Golden Lion. It is Boyle's first film at Venice.

Pearce told the festival press conference earlier in the day that he had not contacted Murdoch but had exchanged messages with his daughter Elisabeth. "She did say to me, 'Dad's very happy that you're playing him.' But he hadn't seen the film at that point, so we'll see," he said. Murdoch, now 95, saw the stage version twice in London and New York, according to its writer James Graham.

Graham adapted his own 2017 play, which won a Tony for Bertie Carvel's Murdoch on Broadway. The film follows Murdoch's 1969 purchase of the struggling Sun and his hiring of Larry Lamb, played by Jack O'Connell, as the editor charged with overtaking the Daily Mirror. Claire Foy plays Jules Davies, a character new to the film and drawn from several women who worked on the paper.

Boyle said the film "doesn't monsterize Rupert Murdoch, which of course a lot of people do now". "I think it's because he represented at the time a breath of fresh air in what was a very rigid British society," he said, adding that Murdoch was "dealing with a lot of prejudice against him as an Australian, which I can understand". On the difference from the stage: "In the stage play, the darkness is reported off stage, and yet I knew in cinema you would see it. And then you have to find an actor that can take you there."

Graham said Murdoch gave nothing away when he saw the play. "I remember he was very good at sort of not really giving anything away," he said. "I think he'll be very flattered by the casting." Foy said the 1960s tabloid newsroom was intoxicating to play. "They had power at their fingertips. They knew what they wrote would be what people read and what people believed."

The premiere drew a standing ovation, which Deadline timed at five minutes and Variety at about four. StudioCanal financed the film with Media Res and House Productions and holds it for the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Netflix bought the United States and Latin America, with a limited American cinema run from 11 December ahead of streaming on 8 January. StudioCanal has slated Australian cinemas for 7 January 2027, a day before the film reaches Netflix in the US.

Boyle was asked at the same press conference what the film says about the press now. "The danger with the tech giants, obviously, they'll be able to have an AI journalist who's much more efficient, lot cheaper, etc. etc. But will that AI journalist speak truth to that power that's created it? That's going to be very very tough," he said.

No Australian film is in competition this year. Kuba Dorabialski's Agata the Writer, starring Mia Wasikowska, screens in the Giornate degli Autori sidebar, the first Australian title there since Hounds of Love in 2016, and Jessica DiCosta's short Mothmama screens in Orizzonti on Thursday. Pearce's last Venice premiere was The Brutalist in 2024, which won him his first Oscar nomination.

The competition jury, chaired by Maggie Gyllenhaal, hands out the Golden Lion on 12 September.