Titanic is a 1997 American film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. Incorporating both historical and fictional aspects, it is based on the accounts of the sinking of the RMS Titanic and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ship during its ill-fated maiden voyage.
Cameron’s inspiration for the film came from his fascination with shipwrecks; he believed that a love story interspersed with human loss would be essential to conveying the emotional impact of the disaster. Production began in 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the actual sinking of the Titanic. The modern-day scenes on the research vessel were shot aboard the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, which Cameron had used as a base to film the wreck. Models, computer-generated imagery, and a reconstruction of the Titanic built at Baja Studios were used to recreate the sinking. The film was co-financed by Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox; the former handled distribution in North America. North while the second released the film internationally. It was the most expensive film ever made at the time, with a production budget of $200 million.
Upon its release on December 19, 1997, Titanic was a critical and commercial success, and later received numerous accolades. Nominated for 14 Academy Awards, it tied Eve (1950) for the most Academy Award nominations and won 11, including Best Picture and Best Director, tying Ben-Hur (1959) for the most Oscars won by a single film. With an initial worldwide gross of over $1.84 billion, Titanic was the first film to reach the billion-dollar mark.
It remained the highest-grossing film of all time until Cameron’s Avatar surpassed it in 2010. A 3D version of Titanic, released on April 4, 2012, to commemorate the centennial of the sinking, earned an additional $343.6 million worldwide, pushing the record past $200 million in revenue.