'Jowhar' Finally Meets Its Local Audience at London Film Festival as Jack O'Connell Shares Thoughts

Guy Pearce and director Danny Boyle also spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about bringing the Fleet Street origin story, directed by Rupert Murdoch, to British fans: "If it doesn't work here, it doesn't work anywhere."

Danny Boyle and his all-star cast, led by Jack O'Connell and Guy Pearce, took to the carpet at London's BFI Film Festival for its UK premiere on Monday night, nearly a month after opening at the Venice Film Festival.

O'Connell, star of The Sinners and 28 Years Later: Bone Temple, told The Hollywood Reporter about putting Ink in front of his native audience: "I expect there will be a noticeable difference. "It's a London film. If it doesn't work here, it won't work anywhere."

Cynthia Erivo hopes that "Prima Facie" will lead to a discussion about "how not to consent."

O'Connell, referring to the smoky journalism hotbed on Fleet Street, said he did not categorize the infamous lamb as a "bad" person. "I think he was maybe too ambitious," the star said. "I think this guy was a stalker, or he was obsessed with newspapers, and I guess he broke a few rules along the way. And it wasn't without its victims, but yeah, I don't see him as a bad person."

Pierce, on the other hand, told THR that he would like to meet Murdoch for breakfast. Of being cast as the Australian-born media mogul, he said: "Liz [Murdoch] told me that her dad was happy that I was playing him, but I don't know how much. I can't really speak to that, to be honest. He might see the film and say, 'Oh! Christ, what were they thinking?" He certainly thinks the feature will "resonate" with fans in the British capital.

Boyle, director of Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire and 28 Days Later, said the film presents an integral origin story that speaks to how exciting our current climate is. "You can argue about whether they introduced this completely or whether they nurtured something that was ingrained in us," he told THR. "But this is the beginning of the attention economy, the clickbait economy, 'what's next?' is Swipe, move on.” The very beginning of it is there, the beginning of fire, and now it is fire that is all around us. And I don't know if we're going to survive that... but if you want to understand it, I think there's a very good case for that [as] where it started."

Playwright Graham agreed with Boyle's analysis, explaining that the essence of the work was deeply British. "I really believe that by examining its Britishness and the '60s, people in America, Europe, everywhere will relate to this story, which is basically a story about how a bunch of people changed something in the '60s," he said. "[The Sun] was the worst-selling newspaper in England and [they] turned it into the best-selling newspaper in the world, and I feel like people relate that to what's happening now in technology and Silicon Valley and the culture of breaking things, disrupting things, challenging things." (Boyle actually likened Lamb and Murdoch's achievement in overselling the Daily Mirror to "a local pub team beating Real Madrid.")

Of the unique beast that is Fleet Street, the screenwriter continued: "No other country in the world has had its newspapers on a street with restaurants and bars and culture, and I feel that the richness of it and the glamor of it, as well as the ugliness of it being special, really appeals to people all over the world."

British star O'Connell, who has also worked with Boyle on 28 Years Later , joked that the director had "been quiet" about their next project together, although he admitted they were "inseparable". The actor admitted which film he'd like to be in this year would be Martin McDonagh's CIA tragi-comedy No Wild Horse.

The 70th BFI London Film Festival runs from October 7-18 and opens with the European premiere of Andrew Scott's Elsinore. Some of the most glamorous celebrations so far include: Nine Wild Horses, Artificial, Paper Tiger, Possible Love, Shelter and Labula Negra. Check out THR's Screen Talks coverage of this year's London Film Festival and chat with Andrew Scott, John Malkovich, Javier Bardem, Naomie Aki, Ava DuVernay, Cynthia Erevo, Sofia Coppola, and Danny Boyle.