Level 1 — Absolute Beginner
Danny Boyle is a famous film director from Britain. He has a new film. Its name is Ink.
The film is about a newspaper called The Sun. In 1969, a businessman named Rupert Murdoch buys the newspaper. He wants many people to read it.
Murdoch gives the job of editor to a man named Larry Lamb. Lamb changes the newspaper. He makes it loud, simple and fun. Soon, millions of people buy it.
This week, people can watch a trailer for the film. A trailer is a short video that shows parts of a film. Ink comes to some cinemas in December. In January, people can watch it at home on Netflix.
- famous
- Known by many people.
- director
- The person who tells the actors what to do in a film.
- newspaper
- Large sheets of paper with news, printed every day or week.
- businessman
- A man who works in business, often as an owner.
- editor
- The person who decides what goes into a newspaper.
- loud
- Making a lot of noise or getting a lot of attention.
- trailer
- A short video that shows parts of a new film.
- cinemas
- Buildings where people go to watch films.
Level 2 — Elementary
A new trailer for Ink, the latest film from the British director Danny Boyle, appeared online on Tuesday, 10 November. The film tells the true story of how a small, failing newspaper became the most popular one in Britain.
The story begins in 1969, when the young Australian businessman Rupert Murdoch buys The Sun. He hires an editor called Larry Lamb and gives him a simple order: sell more copies than any rival. Lamb fills the paper with gossip, sport and jokes, and many serious journalists are shocked.
Jack O'Connell takes the part of Lamb, and Guy Pearce appears as Murdoch. Claire Foy is also in the cast. The script is based on a stage drama by the writer James Graham that was a hit in London in 2017.
Ink was the opening film of the Venice Film Festival earlier this year. It arrives in a small number of American cinemas on 11 December. After that, Netflix will show it in the United States and Latin America from 8 January 2027, and it opens in British and Irish cinemas on the same day.
- latest
- Newest or most recent.
- failing
- Not successful and close to ending.
- hires
- Gives someone a job.
- copies
- Single examples of a newspaper or book.
- rival
- A person or company that competes with another.
- gossip
- Talk or stories about other people's private lives.
- cast
- All the actors in a film.
- script
- The written text of a film.
Level 3 — Intermediate
Netflix and StudioCanal released the full trailer for Ink on Tuesday, 10 November, offering the clearest look yet at Danny Boyle's account of the birth of the modern British tabloid. The director of Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire turns here to Fleet Street in 1969, when Rupert Murdoch, then an ambitious outsider from Australia, bought a struggling paper called The Sun.
The trailer centres on the uneasy partnership between Murdoch, portrayed by Guy Pearce, and Larry Lamb, the editor he recruits, portrayed by Jack O'Connell. Murdoch wants circulation; Lamb, a northerner who feels snubbed by the London establishment, wants revenge. Together they give readers what rivals refuse to print, and within a year the paper is on its way to overtaking the Daily Mirror.
The script adapts James Graham's 2017 stage drama, which won praise for refusing to treat its characters as simple villains. Early reviews from the Venice Film Festival, where Ink was the opening film and competed for the Golden Lion, called it hugely entertaining while noting that it covers some familiar ground. Claire Foy co-stars.
The release plan mixes the big screen and streaming. Ink opens in select United States cinemas on 11 December, in time for awards season, and reaches Netflix in the United States and Latin America on 8 January 2027. StudioCanal will distribute it to cinemas in the United Kingdom and Ireland on that same January date. For a film about a man who went on to build a global media empire, the timing is pointed: arguments about what the press owes its readers have rarely been louder.
- tabloid
- A newspaper with short articles, many pictures and stories about famous people.
- ambitious
- Having a strong wish to succeed.
- struggling
- Having great difficulty staying successful.
- recruits
- Finds someone and persuades them to join.
- circulation
- The number of copies of a newspaper sold each day.
- snubbed
- Treated rudely by being ignored.
- adapts
- Changes a written work so it can be made into a film.
- distribute
- To supply films to cinemas.
Level 4 — Advanced
The full trailer for Ink, unveiled by Netflix and StudioCanal on Tuesday, 10 November, sells Danny Boyle's new film as a caper with a conscience: a rush of clattering presses, cigarette smoke and gleeful vulgarity, shadowed by the knowledge of what its protagonist would become. The subject is Rupert Murdoch's 1969 purchase of The Sun, a moribund broadsheet that he and his chosen editor, Larry Lamb, reinvented as the brash tabloid that would upend British journalism.
Guy Pearce lends Murdoch a watchful, almost courteous menace, while Jack O'Connell's Lamb supplies the swagger, a Yorkshire-born newspaperman nursing grievances against a metropolitan elite that never rated him. Their wager, to outsell the mighty Daily Mirror within a year, drives a plot in which each compromise is funnier, and more corrosive, than the last. Claire Foy heads the supporting cast.
The film derives from James Graham's stage drama of 2017, a work admired for its scrupulous refusal to caricature. Boyle, whose instincts run to velocity, appears to have kept that ambivalence. Critics at the Venice Film Festival, where Ink opened proceedings and vied for the Golden Lion, praised its sheer entertainment value even as some observed that the rise-of-a-mogul template is well worn.
Commercially, the rollout is a hybrid. A limited run in United States cinemas begins on 11 December, squarely within the awards calendar, before the film lands on Netflix in the United States and Latin America on 8 January 2027; StudioCanal handles a theatrical release in the United Kingdom and Ireland the same day. There is an irony the marketing does not belabour: a streaming giant is bankrolling a portrait of the last great press baron at the very moment when the institutions he built are being reshaped, and Murdoch himself, now in his nineties, remains a figure about whom few viewers will be neutral.
- caper
- A lively, amusing story about a risky plan.
- vulgarity
- Behaviour or content that is rude or lacks good taste.
- moribund
- Close to death or failure.
- menace
- A quality that suggests danger or threat.
- grievances
- Feelings of having been treated unfairly.
- corrosive
- Slowly causing serious damage.
- ambivalence
- The state of having mixed feelings about something.
- belabour
- To explain or stress something more than is necessary.
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