James Cameron sounded off on an “offensive” rumor that was reported in several U.K. publications concerning the Titan submersible tragedy.
The Sun first reported the anonymously sourced story claiming the Oscar-winning Titanic director was in talks with a major streamer to helm a movie or series about the ill-fated final Titan voyage, which claimed the lives of five people.
“I don’t respond to offensive rumors in the media usually, but I need to now,” Cameron wrote on Twitter. “I’m NOT in talks about an OceanGate film, nor will I ever be.”
The original story quoted a source claiming, “The Titan disaster is already being looked at as a major series for one of the world’s biggest streamers — and James is the first choice for director. It is a subject close to his heart. He told the story of the Titanic so compassionately it feels like a natural step for him to take this on. Retracing the steps of those on board the Titan is a massive undertaking, but there would be a lot of time, money and resources dedicated to it.” The story further claimed that Cameron was trying to line up A-listers such as Matt Damon for the series.
After the tragedy unfolded last month, Cameron – an expert in deep-sea submersibles – gave several interviews articulating what went wrong from a technical standpoint.
Cameron told ABC News at the time, “Many people in the community were concerned about this sub and even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental and what they were doing needed to be certified.” He added, “I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet, he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many died as a result. It’s a very similar tragedy at the exact same site. It’s astonishing and really quite surreal.”
Cameron noted that he’s a submersible designer himself and that he understands the challenges of making such a craft work safely and successfully, and he defended the practice of deep-sea dives as a whole.
“It’s absolutely critical for people to get the take-home message that deep submersible diving is a mature art,” Cameron said. “The safety record is the gold standard, absolutely, not only fatalities but no accidents. … Of course [what happened to the Titan is] the nightmare that we’ve all lived with, we’ve lived with it in the back of our minds.”
Speaking to BBC News, Cameron added that he knew the sub was doomed soon after the news of its vanishing first broke. “I felt in my bones what had happened,” Cameron said. “For the sub’s electronics to fail, and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously — sub’s gone. I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That’s exactly where they found it. [It] felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff.”
Cameron’s 1997 box office hit Titanic heavily showcased footage of the actual wreck site and the use of submersibles to explore the remains of the ship.
The U.S. Coast Guard said the missing sub imploded during its dive near the wreckage site and that all aboard were killed instantly.
The assessment was based on a search-and-rescue team finding debris from the Titan on the ocean floor.
The sub was operated by OceanGate Expeditions, whose CEO, Stockton Rush, was among the dead. Rush had been criticized for past interviews where he expressed a casual attitude toward safety and for using off-the-shelf components for some aspects of his sub, which had not been certified.
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