'It was sort of like going to Mecca first, and getting religion,' said Cameron in an interview. In total, he made 12 dives - many of them between 15 and 17 hours - and in the process spent more time on the Titanic than the passengers did in 1912.

In 1995, Cameron took two deep-sea submersibles to the floor of the Atlantic and came back with powerful footage of the real Titanic wreckage, which appeared in the present-day segments of the film. Cameron spent more time on the Titanic than the people on the Titanic did At the time, he reportedly jotted these notes: 'Do story with bookends of present-day scene … intercut with memory of a survivor … needs a mystery or driving plot element.'Ģ. But while he was researching submersible systems for The Abyss, he met National Geographic explorer in residence Robert Ballard, leader of the crew that discovered the wreckage of the Titanic it was then that the idea for a film began to solidify. Titanic was inspired by James Cameron's fascination with shipwrecksįrom childhood, James Cameron had a fascination with shipwrecks. Made by Canadian director James Cameron, the film also catapulted Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to fame, and rekindled interest in the 1912 sinking, which cost more than 1,500 people their lives.īut how much do you know about the making of the film? To mark the 20th anniversary of the movie Cameron pitched as ' Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic,' we've gathered 20 fascinating facts.ġ. The year was 1997, and at the time Titanic was first released in Japan on Nov. 1, it was the biggest-budget film of all time - and one that incorporated everything from cutting-edge deep-sea submersibles to a life-size model of the ill-fated luxury liner. It was an epic film about an epic disaster.

Titanic ship movie set