Titanic (1997 movie)

The film was directed by James Cameron and starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane[?], Frances Fisher[?], Kathy Bates[?], David Warner, Danny Nucci[?], Gloria Stuart[?], Victor Garber[?], Bernard Hill, Bernard Fox[?], and Bill Paxton[?].

When this epic disaster film[?] was not finished in time for its scheduled July 1997 release date, it sent shockwaves throughout Hollywood: studio execs began wondering if they might have another Heaven's Gate on their hands. The two releasing studios (20th Century Fox had the international distribution; Paramount Pictures had the U.S. rights) panicked. By the middle of 1997 Titanic had become the most costly film ever made (its reported cost hovered in the $200 million range) and the bills were still coming in. When director James Cameron finally delivered the film to Paramount, it ran over 3 hours and it was anyone's guess whether he would ever work in Hollywood again. But Cameron stood his ground and threatened edit-happy studio executives with the message: "You will cut my film over my dead body."

Moved to a crowded release date of December 19, 1997, the film opened with little promotion, but brought in a respectable $US28 million in ticket sales for the weekend. Within a week the gross tripled. By New Year's Day, the film had hit $US100 million and showed no sign of slowing down. It held a virtual lock on first place at the box office for nearly four months and would become the highest grossing film of all-time with more than $US1.6 billion in ticket sales worldwide. Now the studio executives claim they knew all along the film would be big.

On release, despite critical reservations expressed about the script, the pairing of the seemingly doomed love story between the leads and state-of-the-art special effects proved tremendously popular with both the public and the Oscar voters.

Titanic won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. It won in just about every category except for the acting and screenplay categories.

See RMS Titanic for other films on this subject.