“Titantic” director James Cameron denies rumors he’s involved in talks about an OceanGate film and says he never will be.
Earlier this summer, an OceanGate submersible went missing when it set off to explore the Titanic wreckage. The submersible is believed to have imploded, per the Deseret News.
The five people on board were Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate; Hamish Harding, a British aviator; Shahzada Dawood, a British Pakistani businessman; Suleman Dawood, son of Shahzada Dawood; and Paul-Henry Nargeolet, director of underwater research for E/M Group and RMS Titanic Inc.
“The director and noted deep-sea expert tweeted an impassioned note to followers on Saturday after the Sun published a report titled: ‘DIVE DEEP Titanic director James Cameron in talks with major streaming network to create drama series on doomed Titan sub.’ The piece claimed that an ‘insider’ told the publication that Cameron ‘is first choice for director’ of a film about the events on the Titan submersible,” per The Guardian.
Cameron said in a tweet, “I don’t respond to offensive rumors in the media usually, but I need to now. I’m NOT in talks about an OceanGate film, nor will I ever be.”
What did James Cameron say about the Titan?
While Cameron is known for “Avatar” and “Titanic” in the film world, he’s also an accomplished diver. He’s visited the wreckage of the Titanic 33 times and broke the record for deepest solo dive when he took the Deepsea Challenger to the sea floor of the Marianas Trench, per the Deseret News.
When news stories about the Titan submersible began circulating, Cameron spoke to different media outlets about what happened.
“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 people died as a result,” Cameron told ABC News.
“For a very similar tragedy, where warnings went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think is just astonishing,” Cameron said to ABC News.
Cameron told CNN that after he heard the submersible went missing, he soon believed it had imploded.
“The only scenario that I could come up with in my mind that could account for that was an implosion — a shock wave event so powerful that it actually took out a secondary system that has its own pressure vessel and its own battery power supply, which is the transponder that the (mother) ship uses to track where the sub is,” he said to CNN.
OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein said to CNN about Cameron’s comments that Cameron “has pushed the limits of technology and operations in pursuit of his expeditions so it kind of comes with the territory and I kind of again wish we would hold off judgment and just see exactly what the data comes back with.”