Titanic is a 1997 American disaster/romantic/drama 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 classes who 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.
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. 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.
The film is due to be re-released in theatres in 2012 after Cameron completes its 3-D transformation.
Release
Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox financed Titanic, and expected Cameron to complete the film for a release on July 2, 1997. The film was to be released on this date "in order to exploit the lucrative summer season ticket sales when blockbuster films usually do better". In April, Cameron said the film's special effects were too complicated and that releasing the film for summer would not be possible.[16] With production delays, Paramount pushed back the release date to December 19, 1997. "This fueled speculation that the film itself was a disaster." Though a preview screening in Minneapolis on July 14 "generated positive reviews" and "[c]hatter on the Internet was responsible for more favorable word of mouth about the [film]". This led to more positive media coverage.
The film premiered on November 1, 1997, at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where reaction was described as "tepid" by The New York Times. However, positive reviews started to appear back in the United States; the official Hollywood premiere occurred on December 14, 1997, where "the big movie stars who attended the opening were enthusiastically gushing about the film to the world media".
Box Office
The film received steady attendance after opening in North America on Friday, December 19, 1997. By the end of that same weekend, theaters were beginning to sell out. The film debuted with $8,658,814 on its opening day and $28,638,131 over the opening weekend from 2,674 theaters, averaging to about $10,710 per venue, and ranking #1 at the box office, ahead of the 18th James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies. By New Year's Day, Titanic had made over $120 million, had increased in popularity and theaters continued selling out. Its biggest single day took place on Saturday February 14 (Valentine's Day) 1998, making $13,048,711, more than six weeks after it debuted in North America. After it was released, it stayed at #1 for 15 consecutive weeks in the United States and Canada box office, which remains the record for any film. By March 1998, it was the first film to earn more than $1 billion worldwide. The film stayed in theaters in North America for almost ten months before finally closing on Thursday October 1, 1998 with a final domestic gross of $600,788,188. Box Office Mojo estimates that after adjusting for ticket price inflation, Titanic would be the sixth highest-grossing film of all time in the United States and Canada. The film made double that amount overseas with an international gross of $1,248,025,607 and accumulated a grand total of $1,843,201,268 worldwide to become the highest-grossing film in history, and remained so for twelve years, until Avatar (also written and directed by Cameron) surpassed it in 2010.
Awards and Honors
Titanic began its awards sweep starting with the Golden Globes, winning four, namely Best Motion Picture (Drama), Best Director, Best Original Score, and Best Song. Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart were also nominees but lost. It won the ACE "Eddie" Award, ASC Award, Art Directors Guild Award, Cinema Audio Society Award, Screen Actors Guild Awards, (Best Supporting Actress Gloria Stuart), The Directors Guild of America Award, and Broadcast Film Critics Association Award (Best Director James Cameron), and The Producer Guild of America Awards. It was also nominated for ten BAFTA awards, including Best Film and Director.
The film was nominated for a record-tying 14 Academy Awards and won 11, including the Best Picture and Best Director. It also picked up Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, Best Original Song, and Best Art Direction awards.Kate W inslet, Gloria Stuart and the make-up artists were the three nominees that did not win. James Cameron's original screenplay and Leonardo DiCaprio were not nominees. It was the second film to win eleven Academy Awards, after Ben-Hur. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King would also match this record in 2004, with its 11 wins from 11 nominations.
Titanic won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song, as well as three Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television. The film's soundtrack became the best-selling primarily orchestral soundtrack of all time, and became a worldwide success, spending 16 weeks at #1 in the United States and was certified diamond for over 11 million copies sold in the United States alone. The soundtrack also became the best-selling album of 1998 in the U.S. "My Heart Will Go On" won the Grammy Awards for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television. The film also won Best Male Performance for Leonardo DiCaprio and Best Movie at the MTV Movie Awards, Best Film at the People's Choice Awards, and Favorite Movie at the 1998 Kids' Choice Awards. It won various awards outside the United States, including the Awards of the Japanese Academy as the Best Foreign Film of the Year. Titanic eventually won nearly 90 awards and had an additional 47 nominations from various award-giving bodies around the world.[104] Additionally, the book about the making of the film was at the top of The New York Times' bestseller list for several weeks, "the first time that such a tie-in book had achieved this status".
Source : Wikipedia
