HISTORY's Moments in Media: Titanic's Surprising Billion-Dollar Box Office

Not the boat of course the RMS Titanic the thenlargest ship ever built and dubbed quotunsinkablequot in the press set sail from Southampton England on April 10 1912 and went down in the North Atlantic just days later in the early hours of April 15 1912The December 1997 date was the US release of the blockbuster tearjerker about that disaster starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by James Cameron It was the topgrossing movie in America that preChristmas weekend beating out the latest James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies Titanic held that spot for the next 15 weeks and set a record that is unlikely to be repeated Remarkably it earned even more in its 11th weekend amp8212 32 million amp8212 than it did on its first That 11th weekend was Valentine39s Day and Titanic is of course a romantic epic complete with the swelling soaring Celine Dion song quotMy Heart Will Go Onquot It was the topselling single of 1998Titanic went on to become the first movie in history to take in 1 billion at the worldwide box office the second to earn a recordtying 14 Academy Award nominations and the second to win Oscars in a recordtying 11 categories Cameron himself took home three of them Best Picture Best Director and Best Film Editing Winslet won too for Best ActressIt also created the phenomenon dubbed quotLeomaniaquot a hysteria surrounding its handsome young star DiCaprio who turned 22 while making the movie In a BuzzFeed News essay marking the film39s 20th anniversary writer Sarah Marshall identified Leomania as a quotlevel 3 crush pandemicquot According to standards set by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention for real outbreaks level 2 requires direct contact for infection but a level 3 hazard spreads through the airMarshall39s piece cited a young girl in Italy who39d watched Titanic more than 50 times to see DiCaprio39s Jack Dawson In London 22 people were nearly trampled when a mob of 5000 Leo fans stormed the premiere of his Man in the Iron Mask Marshall noted that in television appearances promoting Titanic Winslet was typically asked about her work the production acting DiCaprio on the other hand was treated as a starlet quotGive 39em a wave Leoquot Mary Hart prompted him on the Golden Globes red carpet as shrieks rose around themIn 2012 with its 3D rerelease Titanic crossed 2 billion at the global box office only the second movie to do so the first being Cameron39s 2009 scifi fantasia AvatarAnd yet during Titanic39s production many were convinced the movie would sinkTitanic was entirely Cameron39s vision His obsession with the cruise ship39s tragedy grew after watching a 1987 National Geographic special on the lost ship39s discovery he jotted some notes about a movie idea Although he39d proven himself a very capable scifi and action director with mega successes such as the first two Terminator movies Aliens and the Arnold SchwarzeneggerJamie Lee Curtis action comedy True Lies he39d never before taken on a love story He convinced 20th Century Fox Chairman Peter Chernin to greenlight his project and got a 110 million budget by agreeing to give back 4 million of his own salary He knew that budget wouldn39t be enough but he was determined to move forwardHis plans required building a new 40acre studio along the Pacific coast in Mexico It featured a 17000gallon tank and inside it a 775foot 90percentscale replica of the famed ocean liner Cameron39s obsession with detail meant that each time he reshot the sinking firstclass dining room it was raised out of the water dried out and reset with 1800 pieces of silverware With so many night scenes shooting days ran to 20 hours long DiCaprio and Winslet spend untold hours floating in a tank full of cold water that was pumped in from the Pacific The crew eventually started heating itCameron blew through his budget and his deadlines Titanic39s release date scheduled for July 1997 slipped to December Its budget nearly doubled to 200 million When a 20th Century Fox executive came to Mexico to try to rein Cameron in the director refused There was nothing the studio could do with so much invested they couldn39t very well fire himEditing was just as arduous according to Cameron39s version of the creation story An excerpt in The Hollywood Reporter details how the turning point came when Paramount chief Sherry Lansing whose studio was coproducing with Fox came to watch a rough cut at Cameron39s Malibu home She loved itA few months later so did audiencesClick the social buttons to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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HISTORY's Moments in Media: Titanic's Surprising Billion-Dollar Box Office

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HISTORY's Moments in Media: Titanic's Surprising Billion-Dollar Box Office

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