James Cameron has denied “offensive rumours” involving him in a film about the deadly explosion of the OceanGate Titanic submersible that killed five people on board.
The famous Hollywood director, who led the Oscar-winning Titanic film in 1997, strongly denied any involvement in a disaster movie that gripped people around the world.
“I don’t respond to damaging media rumors usually, but I have to today,” he tweeted on Saturday. “I will NOT talk about an OceanGate film, and neither will I.”
James Cameron has denied that he is making a movie on the Titanic sub disaster
(ABC News)
Cameron, 68, visited the Titanic wreck in the North Atlantic 33 times and said nothing about the loss of the OceanGate sub.
It lost contact with its mother ship one hour and 45 minutes into its two-hour descent to the seabed, causing a major search and rescue operation.
After a four-day search, the US Coast Guard revealed that a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) found pieces of debris from the Titan on the sea floor 1,600ft (about 500m) from the bow of the Titanic wreck.
British adventurer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood were killed aboard the deep-sea vessel, along with OceanGate Expeditions CEO chief Stockton Rush and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
I don’t respond to damaging media rumors usually, but I have to today. I am NOT talking about an OceanGate film, and neither am I.
— James Cameron (@JimCameron) July 15, 2023
Cameron previously compared the tragedy that befell the Titan to the ocean liner its crew was trying to reach.
“I was struck by the parallels with the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about the ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed wildly through an ice field on a night without month,” Cameron told ABC News.
About 1,500 people died when the Titanic sank in April 1912. The site of the wreck remained a mystery until 1985, when explorer Robert Ballard found its remains about 640kms off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, in depth of 4,000m.
Cameron later revealed that he had known sensitive information about the fate of the Titan sub for days before its remains were found.
The director said he learned that the US Navy’s top-secret listening devices had detected an explosion near the Titanic wreckage within an hour of it happening on Monday, and had since described the search for five crew a “nightmarish charade”.
He also claimed that the crew of the Titan knew that the hull of the submersible had started to crack and was trying to resurface when the “catastrophic implosion” occurred.
The 68-year-old told ABC News that his contacts within the “community” shared mission details with him, a reference to the small and intimate submersible Manned Underwater Vehicle (MUV) industry.
