Titanic is a
1997 American
epic,
romantic,
disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by
James Cameron about the sinking of the
RMS Titanic. It stars
Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson and
Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, two members of different
social classeswho fall in love aboard the ill-fated maiden voyage of the ship. The
main characters and the central love story are fictional, but some
characters (such as members of the ship's passengers and crew) are
based on historical figures.
Gloria Stuart portrays the elderly Rose, who narrates the film in a modern day
framing device, and
Billy Zane stars as Cal Hockley, the overbearing fiancé of Rose's younger self.
Production of the film began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the real wreck of the RMS
Titanic. He envisioned the love story as a means to engage the audience with the real-life tragedy. Shooting took place on board the
Akademik Mstislav Keldysh – which aided Cameron in filming the real wreck – for the modern scenes, and a reconstruction of the ship was built at
Playas de Rosarito, Baja California. Cameron also used
scale models and
computer-generated imagery to recreate the sinking. At the time, the picture became the
most expensive film ever made, costing approximately
US$200 million with funding from
Paramount Pictures and
20th Century Fox.
[3][4][5][6]The film was originally to be released on July 2, 1997, but
post-production delays pushed back the film's release to December 19,
1997.
www.nytimes.com-6" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">[7] The film turned out to be an enormous critical and commercial success. Nominated for fourteen
Academy Awards, it won eleven, including
Best Picture.
[8] It became
the highest-grossing film of all time, with a worldwide total of over $1.8 billion, and remained so for twelve years until Cameron's directorial follow-up,
Avatar, surpassed it in 2010.
[9]www.hollywoodreporter.com-9" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">[10]The film is due to be re-released in theatres in 2012 after Cameron completes its
3-D transformation.
[11] 
