Danny Boyle’s Ink is Netflix’s latest test of how much a short theatrical window can do for an awards-season streamer.
Rupert Murdoch built an empire on getting the story out first. Netflix is taking a slower road with the movie about him. On Tuesday the streamer unveiled the official trailer for Danny Boyle’s Ink, which opens in select U.S. theaters on Dec. 11 and starts streaming on Jan. 8, 2027.
That gap is four weeks. It buys a theatrical run in the thick of awards season, and it is short enough that Netflix subscribers barely wait. IndieWire is already calling the film a Netflix Oscar hopeful.
The ownership map is split. According to Wikipedia’s entry on the film, citing Deadline, Netflix picked up U.S. and Latin American rights in July, while StudioCanal, which produced it with Media Res and House Productions, handles France and the U.K. That means British audiences pay for tickets on Jan. 8, the same day Americans can stream it at home, a detail TheWrap flagged when the first teaser arrived in September.
The film adapts James Graham’s stage play about Murdoch’s purchase of The Sun in 1969 and the editor he hired to remake it. Guy Pearce plays Murdoch. Jack O’Connell plays Larry Lamb, the editor, and Claire Foy plays a fictional composite character. The play earned a Tony nomination for best play, and Bertie Carvel won a Tony for playing Murdoch on Broadway; Carvel returns in the film as Hugh Cudlipp.
Critics have been warm rather than rapturous. The film opened the Venice festival on Sept. 2, then played Telluride and Toronto, and it sits at 73% on Rotten Tomatoes and 78 on Metacritic, per the same Wikipedia page.
Box office is not the point of a run this small. The numbers worth watching are the awards ballots, and whether a movie about a man who disrupted Fleet Street can disrupt a crowded January streaming slate.
Sources
- ComingSoon – Jack O’Connell & Guy Pearce Take on Iconic Media Empire in Danny Boyle’s Ink Trailer – https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/trailers/2220852-danny-boyle-ink-netflix-movie-trailer-release-date
- IndieWire (via Yahoo) – ‘Ink’ Trailer: Guy Pearce’s Rupert Murdoch Builds His Tabloid Empire in Danny Boyle’s Fleet Street Thriller – https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/trailers/articles/ink-trailer-guy-pearce-rupert-143000833.html
- TheWrap – First Trailer for Danny Boyle’s ‘Ink’ Energetically Dramatizes England’s Most Notorious Paper – https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/ink-trailer-danny-boyle-jack-oconnell-netflix/
- Wikipedia – Ink (2026 film) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_(2026_film)
- Wikipedia – Ink (play) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_(play)
Featured photo: Bank Phrom / Unsplash (Unsplash License). Trailer embedded from Netflix’s official YouTube channel.
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