With James Cameron’s “Titanic” having hit 4K UHD disc and digital this week, the famed filmmaker was out talking up the 1997 Best Picture winner and his memories of it over 25 years later.
Famously, at the time, the film was the most expensive movie ever made, and that was with Cameron cutting costs wherever he could. One of those cost savings came from certain rules when it came to the hiring of background extras.
Speaking to The Los Angeles Times says he employed several ‘cheats’ during the making of the film to save money. One of those is that they only cast short people as extras in order to make the actual Titanic ship set appear even bigger on screen.
Cameron adds that: “Anybody above 5’8″, we didn’t cast them. It’s like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting.” Other cost-cutting came via more mundane methods such as cutting entire sets that were planned.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Gloria Stuart, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Victor Garber, and Bill Paxton star in the film about the sinking of the famous RMS Titanic and follows two people as they fall in love despite their different social standings.
Along with winning eleven Oscars and being a critical darling, it became the first ever movie to reach the billion-dollar mark at the box office and was the highest-grossing film of all time for over two decades until Cameron’s 2009 film “Avatar” overtook it.
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