How 'Ink' Rebuilt The Sun's 1969 Newsroom for Real

Danny Boyle's "Ink", which traces Rupert Murdoch's 1969 takeover of The Sun, premieres at the London Film Festival and opens in select theaters Dec. 11 before reaching Netflix on Jan. 8 in the U.S. and Latin America. Its production designers, Gareth Pugh and Carson McColl, built the newsroom from scratch with three fully functional Linotype machines, working rotary phones and period typewriters.

The film is based on the Tony-nominated play of the same name by James Graham, who adapted his own work for the screen. Guy Pearce plays a brash, 30-something Murdoch. Jack O'Connell plays editor Larry Lamb, the working-class journalist who helped remake The Sun into a populist juggernaut.

Boyle's brief to his designers was short. "He said he wanted to reset the expectations of a period film," McColl said. "We took that to mean that he wanted to recreate 1969, but in a way that felt immediate and grabby."

Why Fleet Street had to be rebuilt elsewhere

The real Fleet Street of 1969 no longer exists. The Sun's headquarters stood on Bouverie Street, with the print press set in the basement of the offices. Modern buildings occupy the site today.

"A lot of Fleet Street doesn't exist anymore," Pugh said.

The team found a replacement in Bromley, U.K. "It had been vacated by the local council, and the mix of different architectural styles made it ideal for housing the various set-pieces, particularly the newsroom," Pugh explained.

What does the newsroom set reveal about the film?

McColl calls the newsroom the "nerve center" of "Ink". Boyle referred to the space as a spaceship. "It's where we spent most of our time in the script," Pugh noted.

The layout mattered most. "For the space to feel real, the layout was key," McColl said. "In a newsroom, especially of that era, there was a daily system of way-finding — from the morning until the copy deadline at night — that would escalate into a frenzy of activity and human traffic."

The designers worked with consultants who had been on Fleet Street in 1969 to map the room and choreograph its flow with the cast. "It was amazing to see how it resembled an ecosystem," McColl said.

The film's low budget forced creative solutions. The pair had recently quit smoking, yet they wanted the smell of the era. "We smoked like two packets of cigarettes, so that it smelled like cigarette smoke," McColl said.

The hardest props to source were the Linotype machines The Sun used for typesetting. "They're priceless. There are very, very few left in the world," McColl said.

Set decorator Ben Barrington Groves found the answer. "He found someone who had an obsession with hot metal printing and he convinced them to come on this journey with us," McColl said. The production secured three fully functional machines.

How Larry Lamb's office tells the story

Lamb's office was designed to track his arc across the film. "The newsroom was supposed to look tired — functional, but reflective of a struggling newspaper," McColl explained. "Amid the chaos, Larry needed his own space and as the movie progresses, he should feel increasingly isolated. We wanted the audience to see him through the gridded glass windows, alone in the final scenes where he's on the phone with Hugh Cudlip, the newsroom deserted. It was a visual way of showing that while he got everything he wanted, he's found himself alone."

Set decorator Alice Davies worked closely with the pair. "When I walked into Larry's office one day, her rough layout was nearly perfect," McColl recalled.

The detail extended to the phones. Larry's desk phone worked. "You could pick it up and you'd get the sales numbers," McColl said.

How did they film a 1969 tube sequence?

One sequence shows Murdoch riding the London Underground. The network has been modernized, and only one train of the right era survives, near Watford. "It's part of a museum, so the idea of bringing a film crew in initially made the curators nervous," Pugh said.

When the train could not be used as planned, the team improvised. "We used high-powered wind machines and flying newspapers to create the frenetic environment, all while being careful with the artifacts," Pugh said.

Lighting designer Steve Mackie used fast-moving bar lights. "He was able to rush light down the entire length of the train and make it look like it was going at a million miles an hour," Pugh said.

The preparation was deliberately rough-edged. "There was something very punk and DIY," McColl said. "During prep, we experimented with different setups — running cameras down corridors and building fake tube windows to achieve the right look. Danny brought a 360-degree camera into 'Ink,' and used it for certain sequences, including the pivotal kidnapping of Muriel Mackay. It felt brave and risky, but it paid off."

The Dec. 11 theatrical release will show whether that resourcefulness translates. A period film built on working machines rather than digital shortcuts now faces its own deadline: the audience.