{"id":674929,"date":"2026-09-06T06:01:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T06:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/674929\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T06:01:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T06:01:17","slug":"danny-boyle-interview-on-ink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/674929\/","title":{"rendered":"Danny Boyle Interview on ‘Ink’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Danny Boyle remembers his first Telluride Film<\/a> Festival in 2008, when \u201cSlumdog Millionaire\u201d had been unceremoniously dumped by Warner Bros. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou think it\u2019s not good enough to be released,\u201d Boyle said. \u201cIt was part of an economic decision that had been made, and after all the work that we put in, I was heartbroken. A third of it was in Hindi. There\u2019s nothing to compare it to. There\u2019s no real prospects. And then suddenly Searchlight<\/a> picked it up, and to be at this festival, which I\u2019d never been to, and to have the sense of people, not just appreciating it, but being hungry for it, because that\u2019s what happens here if people pass on the word. You could feel that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'The<\/a> \"Making<\/a> <\/p>\n

I interviewed him for the first time at Telluride that year. And \u201cSlumdog Millionaire\u201d went on to win eight Oscars including Best Picture and Director. <\/p>\n

Boyle feels similarly about \u201cInk,\u201d which debuted well in Venice and then came to Telluride. \u201cI didn\u2019t think anybody would see this film,\u201d said Boyle at Netflix<\/a>\u2018s Telluride condo. \u201cIt\u2019s a passion project. This one we couldn\u2019t raise enough money for. StudioCanal, God bless them, did give us money. Nobody else would.\u201d Netflix will put the movie theaters on December 11 for 30 days. <\/p>\n

\u201cInk\u201d was adapted by playwright James Graham from his hit West End and Broadway play about Fleet Street, the central hub of the British newspaper industry, in the 1960s. \u201cWhat does an international audience know about Fleet Street?\u201d said Boyle. \u201cWho is ever going to see this? Tessa Ross gave it to Julie [Huntsinger] ahead of time to have a look at. Then Julie picked this film. It was that boost again, because I knew what it meant to actually be here. It meant you had a profile, that intelligent, interesting people from world cinema were going to see it. You have the platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boyle is sticking to his instincts of late, working in the U.K. again after directing sequel \u201c28 Years Later\u201d and producing the follow-up \u201cThe Bone Temple,\u201d which both starred Jack O\u2019Connell as a rip-roaring cult leader who loves the ultra-violence. \u201cI\u2019m stronger when I work on material that I feel is a battle to get made,\u201d he said. \u201cI like to sell something to people. You want people to see it like you see it. It\u2019s mad, really.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kinetic and visual, \u201cInk\u201d should play equally well at home and in theaters. Boyle saw the play, about how Australian publisher Rupert Murdoch bought The Sun and hired Larry Lamb to turn it into a tabloid sensation, on the West End in 2019. \u201cEverybody was applauding Bertie Carvell as Rupert Murdoch,\u201d he said. [He won the Olivier.] \u201cAnd I remember thinking, absolutely clear as day, \u2018It\u2019s not his play, is it? This is the other guy\u2019s play.\u2019 So when James sent the screenplay years later, I read it and I knew Jack was Larry Lamb.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SLUMDOG\u2018Slumdog Millionaire\u2019 \u00a9Fox Searchlight\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Boyle had to fight for both O\u2019Connell and Australian actor Guy Pearce. \u201cI begged Guy to hang on,\u201d said Boyle. \u201cI apologized to Guy because it wasn\u2019t like I\u2019d offered it to him, but I\u2019d said \u2018I want you,\u2019 and bless him he hung in there for us. And then we got Claire Foy, who was more surprising than anyone.\u201d Foy\u2019s journalist represents all the women in media who had to cope with the misogyny of the period. <\/p>\n

Boyle has fun with the set details of noisy printing presses and typesetting machines. But the central show-stopper takes place in a restaurant booth when Murdoch sells Lamb his new job. \u201cWe have a little rig,\u201d said Boyle. \u201cIt\u2019s poor man\u2019s \u2018Matrix\u2019 bullet time. You use 20 iPhones in a little ring round the table, and they\u2019re all filming at the same time, and you film a bit of the action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boyle wanted to reflect the film\u2019s subject, tabloidization, with his camera. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to make your subject matter, your form, equal your content,\u201d he said. \u201cHow is the camera seductive and pleasing and easy and makes you feel alive? As Murdoch says, \u2018Don\u2019t you want people to feel alive when they read their newspaper in the morning?\u2019 So you\u2019re trying to use some of the techniques of the tabloid to literally sell the film in cinematic terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of this will work if \u201cyou don\u2019t have the central performances locking it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou tire of it quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pearce is restrained but powerful as the ultra-conservative Murdoch who is uncomfortable with some of Lamb\u2019s more outrageous tactics. It\u2019s O\u2019Connell who goes big as Lamb, who throws away his integrity to chase the lowest common denominator. Murdoch goes along with him as long as he\u2019s churning out cash. \u201cMurdoch is also known, apart from being at bottom a businessman,\u201d said Boyle, \u201cas somebody who is romantic and old-fashioned about journalism, and believes he can bring those two forces together\u2014the economic and the preservation of the journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Lamb goes all the way to grab readers. And O\u2019Connell is as magnetic as he is repulsive. \u201cActors are few and far between where they can take you into a problematic character and take you with them,\u201d said Boyle. \u201cThey are repelling, but you remain drawn to them. It\u2019s that double opposite magnetism. Not many people have it, and Jack\u2019s got it, and he\u2019s skillful. You\u2019re inside his mind. Lamb is hollowed out by the end. He would have preferred to be acknowledged for being a great popular journalist, and he\u2019s not. His legacy is not that he created the biggest selling newspaper in the world, which he did. His legacy is the Page Three [with topless models], so it comes back to haunt him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"INK.\u2018Ink\u2019Anthony Dickenson<\/p>\n

The movie uses about 30 seconds of AI to animate a few photographs. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t afford to recreate Fleet Street,\u201d Boyle said. \u201cYou have to use photographs and animate them, because it\u2019s gone. And we brought Margaret Thatcher to life with a bit of AI. I didn\u2019t want an imitation Thatcher. I wanted Thatcher herself because she did used to go to Murdoch\u2019s office, and she did drink whiskey with her shoes off, curled up on his couch, and she did give him a knighthood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boyle also animated a photograph of gangsters the Crays. \u201cI wanted those two moments to be absolutely real,\u201d said Boyle, \u201cand not consult their estates about their use. It\u2019s fundamental for the story because you begin to move towards the truth, the facts. These real things happened as a consequence of The Sun, and we\u2019re all responsible for this. I\u2019m not blaming other people. We\u2019ve decided on individuals, and the village has been abandoned. The pillars of the village are gradually being deconstructed. Journalism, one of the pillars of any free, humane society, that journalists can speak truth to power, is being dismantled.\u201d<\/p>\n

While filmmakers may want to continue to save money by using AI as a tool, Boyle knows that it is controversial in many ways. \u201cSadly, it\u2019s not going to matter what you or I think,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat matters is what 20-year-olds think about it and what they\u2019re going to decide to do about it. So it\u2019s good we express an opinion. The elders should, and it\u2019s important to fight to make sure it doesn\u2019t replace jobs. So we had an actor playing Thatcher for that whole sequence. We paid an actor and then just replaced the head. So we never tried to replace anyone. AI now works with visual effects. But it\u2019s hard, isn\u2019t it? Because for every Chris Nolan, there are thousands of filmmakers who can\u2019t raise money. What are they going to do? How are they going to tell their stories? Maybe they won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"INK.\u2018Ink\u2019Nick Wall<\/p>\n

Next up: Boyle wants to set up \u201cAntarctica,\u201d about two men crossing Antarctica on solo trips, written by John Hodge. He is also trying to do an adaptation of his film \u201cYesterday\u201d into a stage musical. Richard Curtis and Emma Freud are writing. \u201cA musical is a huge technical exercise,\u201d said Boyle. \u201cYou have to be humble.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Danny Boyle remembers his first Telluride Film Festival in 2008, when \u201cSlumdog Millionaire\u201d had been unceremoniously dumped by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,18,117,6319,597,19,2810,17,127],"class_list":["post-674929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-festivals","tag-film","tag-ie","tag-interviews","tag-ireland","tag-netflix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}