In Ink, Guy Pearce’s Rupert Murdoch Is Rupert Murdoch–Approved

Rupert Murdoch is pleased Guy Pearce is playing him … for now. At the Venice Film Festival, Pearce told the press he’d been in touch with Elisabeth Murdoch, who said her dad is onboard with Ink, at least as far as Pearce’s casting is concerned. “She did say to me, ‘Dad’s very happy that you’re playing him,’” Pearce said, per Variety. “But he hadn’t seen the film at that point, so we’ll see.”

We all got to see a little bit of Pearce’s performance, since Netflix just dropped the teaser on YouTube. Ink, directed by Danny Boyle, is the story of how Murdoch and Larry Lamb (Jack O’Connell) took The Sun to the top of the tabloids in England. And from that tabloid fortune came Fox, Fox News, and all the other stuff we associate Murdoch with. The self-proclaimed “billionaire tyrant” is mostly aware of the film’s major contours, since he saw the play on which it is based on both the West End and Broadway. Ink is premiering in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where Boyle will be going up against Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard, Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, and a biographical film whose subject is a lot more testy — Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime.