Tabloid headlines redacted from British versions of Danny Boyle’s Netflix drama Ink will appear in full for U.S. theatrical and streaming releases, director Danny Boyle confirmed on Saturday, Deadline reported.
Strict libel laws forced filmmakers to alter the film’s epilogue in the UK, but Boyle announced the change while receiving the Deadline Legend Awards at Deadline’s Contenders Film Los Angeles event.
“We’ve had a battle to get the film to where it is now, and I can tell you — I can say this, can’t I? — I think that we just won the ability [to show the headlines] because we’re in America, and you have better protection for freedom of speech than we have in Britain,” Boyle told the audience at the DGA Theater.
A New Film Cut Arrives This December
Editors are currently working on a new cut of the film for a selected theatrical release on December 11. The film tells the story of Rupert Murdoch and editor Larry Lamb taking over The Sun in the late 1960s, a campaign that established a aggressive new style of journalism.
Boyle pointed to a specific redacted headline above an article covering the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster. That tragedy claimed the lives of 97 Liverpool fans who were crushed during an FA Cup match against Nottingham Forest. published a false report blaming the victims, relying on fabricated police statements.
“There are various headlines … at the end of Ink, and there’s one particular, which although it won’t mean anything to you, to anybody from Britain it does mean a great deal, which is that The Sun ran a terrible headline called ‘The Truth,’ which is one of the principal concerns of James Graham’s screenplay throughout the whole film,” Boyle said.
“It’s one of the low points of British journalism, and we wanted that to always be in the film, and we weren’t able to have it in the British version,” Boyle continued, according to Deadline.
“We have these redacted versions, but know that we’re in America. We’ve got it in there, and I hope that the tidal wave will then reach back to Britain, and we’ll be allowed to put them in there because it’s an important moment for freedom of speech, which you have enshrined.”
Connecting 1960s Tabloids to Modern Fox News
The film stars Jack O’Connell as Larry Lamb and Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch. Boyle noted that the narrative connects the rise of British tabloid culture directly to the later establishment of American cable news.
“What they ignited … and the pact that they came up with to start The Sun culminates financially and principally in the birth of Fox News,” Boyle said.
“Because the money that The Sun made allowed Murdoch to buy 20th Century Fox and then to finance the establishment, the extraordinary establishment, of a new terrestrial channel in America, which takes a lot of money,” Boyle added, according to Deadline. “So there’s an umbilical cord, I think, that connects these two guys and their meeting in 1969 with where we are now.”
Future Streaming and Festival History
Ink opened this year’s Venice Film Festival and has since played at several other festivals. The film is adapted from a play written by James Graham.
Following its December U.S. theatrical rollout, Ink is scheduled to open in the UK on January 8, when it becomes available to stream on Netflix, Deadline reported.
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