Jack O'Connell received the Spotlight Actor Award at the Middleburg Film Festival for his work in Danny Boyle's Ink, and IndieWire placed him among the season's formal awards contenders this week. The film opens in select U.S. theaters December 11.
Ink, adapted by James Graham from his own 2017 stage play, follows Larry Lamb (O'Connell), a Northern English journalist who accepts Rupert Murdoch's offer to edit The Sun into a mass-market tabloid. Guy Pearce plays Murdoch. Claire Foy co-stars as Jules Davies, a composite of The Sun's early female reporters. This is the second time O'Connell and Boyle have worked together, following 28 Years Later earlier this year.
The film opened the 83rd Venice International Film Festival on September 2 as the opening night selection, competing for the Golden Lion. It holds a 73 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 66 reviews and a 78 on Metacritic. Composer Daniel Pemberton won the Venice Soundtrack Stars Award for the score.
O'Connell, born in Derbyshire in 1990, broke through with the prison drama Starred Up in 2013. Screen Daily called his work here "magnetic." The role of Lamb, a working-class journalist navigating a tabloid empire's moral architecture, sits in the same register. Whether the December release lands him a formal nomination is now the story.
Netflix begins streaming Ink January 8, 2027.
