Titanic (1997 film)

Titanic is a 1997 American epic romantic disaster film directed, written, co-produced and co-edited by James Cameron. Incorporating both historical and fictionalized aspects, it is based on accounts of the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as members of different social classes who fall in love during the ship's maiden voyage. The film also features an ensemble cast of Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Danny Nucci, David Warner, and Bill Paxton.
Cameron's inspiration for the film came from his fascination with shipwrecks. He felt a love story interspersed with human loss would be essential to convey the emotional impact of the disaster. Production began on September 1, 1995, when Cameron shot footage of the Titanic wreck. The modern scenes on the research vessel were shot on board the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, which Cameron had used as a base when filming the wreck. Scale models, computer-generated imagery, and a reconstruction of the Titanic built at Baja Studios were used to recreate the sinking. The film was initially in development at 20th Century Fox, but a mounting budget and being behind schedule resulted in Fox asking Paramount Pictures for financial help; Paramount handled distribution in the United States and Canada, while Fox released the film in other territories. Titanic was the most expensive film ever made at the time, with a production budget of $200 million. Filming took place from July 1996 to March 1997.
Titanic premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival on November 1, 1997, and was released in the United States on December 19. It was praised for its visual effects, performances (particularly those of DiCaprio, Winslet, and Gloria Stuart), production values, direction, score, cinematography, story, and emotional depth. Among other awards, it was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won a record-tying 11, including Best Picture and Best Director, tying Ben-Hur (1959) for the most Academy Awards won by a film. With an initial worldwide gross of over $1.84 billion, Titanic was the first film to reach the billion-dollar mark. It was the highest-grossing film of all time until Cameron's next film, Avatar (2009), surpassed it in 2010. Income from the initial theatrical release, retail video, and soundtrack sales and US broadcast rights exceeded $3.2 billion. A number of re-releases have pushed the film's worldwide theatrical total to $2.264 billion, making it the second film to gross more than $2 billion worldwide after Avatar. The Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 2017.
In 1996, aboard the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, treasure hunter Brock Lovett and his team explore the wreck of RMS Titanic, hoping to find a necklace known as the Heart of the Ocean. Instead, they recover a safe containing a drawing of a young woman wearing the necklace. The sketch is dated April 14, 1912, the day the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, resulting in about 1,500 deaths. After seeing a television report about the discovery, centenarian Rose Dawson Calvert contacts Lovett, revealing herself as the woman in the drawing. Hoping she can help locate the necklace, Lovett brings Rose and her granddaughter aboard the Keldysh, where Rose recounts her experience as a Titanic passenger.
In 1912, 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater boards the Titanic in Southampton with her wealthy fiancé, Cal Hockley, and her mother, Ruth. Ruth stresses that Rose's marriage to Cal will resolve their financial problems, but Rose is unhappy in the loveless engagement. Feeling trapped, Rose contemplates suicide by jumping from the ship's stern, but is stopped by Jack Dawson, a poor nomadic artist. Jack and Rose form a friendship, and Jack confesses his growing feelings for her. Though initially resistant, Rose realizes she has fallen in love with Jack, despite Cal's and Ruth's disapproval.
Rose brings Jack to her stateroom and asks him to draw her nude wearing only the necklace. Afterward, they evade Cal's valet, Spicer Lovejoy, and have sex in a car in the cargo hold. On the forward deck, they witness the ship's collision with an iceberg and overhear officers discussing the severity of the situation. When Cal discovers Jack's sketch of Rose and a mocking note she left, he arranges to frame Jack for theft by having Lovejoy plant the necklace on him. Jack is arrested and locked in the master-at-arms' office, while Cal places the necklace in his coat pocket.
As the ship begins sinking, women and children are prioritized for the lifeboats. Rose finds and frees Jack, and they return to the deck, where Cal urges Rose to board a lifeboat, claiming he and Jack will board another. He unwittingly wraps his coat, containing the necklace, around her. However, as her lifeboat is lowered, Rose jumps back onto the sinking ship, unwilling to leave Jack behind. Enraged, Cal grabs a pistol and chases them through the flooding ship but gives up when they escape. Cal manages to secure a place on a lifeboat by pretending to be a child's father.
As the ship's flooded bow sinks, the stern rises into the air, and Jack and Rose cling to the railing. The ship splits in two, and the stern sinks into the freezing water with the remaining passengers. Jack helps Rose onto floating debris and makes her promise to survive and live a full life. Jack dies from hypothermia, but Rose is saved by a returning lifeboat, and later rescued by the RMS Carpathia. Rose remains hidden from Cal and her mother, and gives her name as Rose Dawson on her arrival in New York City.
In the present, Rose reveals that Cal committed suicide after losing his fortune in the 1929 stock market crash. She tells the Keldysh crew that Jack saved her in every possible way, and laments that her memories are all that she has left of him. Touched by her account of the Titanic, Lovett abandons his search for the necklace. Alone at night on the stern of the Keldysh, Rose, who has kept the necklace in her possession all along, drops it into the sea above the wreck. Later, as she lies in her bed, photographs on her dresser depict a life of freedom and adventure inspired by Jack. Aboard the pristine and undamaged Titanic, a young Rose reunites with Jack at the Grand Staircase, applauded by the passengers and crew who died in the sinking.
Although not intended to be an entirely accurate depiction of events, the film includes portrayals of various historical figures:
Several crew members of the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh appear, including Anatoly Sagalevich, the creator and pilot of the Mir self-propelled Deep Submergence Vehicle. Van Ling portrayed Fang Lang; his backstory inspired Cameron to produce a documentary The Six, based on a group of Chinese survivors who survived the sinking. Anders Falk, who filmed a documentary about the film's sets for the Titanic Historical Society, makes a cameo appearance in the film as a Swedish immigrant whom Jack Dawson meets when he enters his cabin; Edward Kamuda and Karen Kamuda, then President and Vice President of the Society, who served as film consultants, were cast as extras in the film.
James Cameron has long had a fascination with shipwrecks, and for him Titanic was "the Mount Everest of shipwrecks". He was almost past the point in his life when he felt he could consider an undersea expedition, but said he still had "a mental restlessness" to live the life he had turned away from when he switched from the sciences to the arts in college. When an IMAX film, Titanica, was made from footage shot of the Titanic wreck, Cameron decided to seek Hollywood funding for his own expedition. It was "not because I particularly wanted to make the movie," Cameron said. "I wanted to dive to the shipwreck."
Cameron wrote a scriptment for a Titanic film, met with 20th Century Fox executives including Peter Chernin, and pitched it as "Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic". Cameron said the executives were unconvinced of the commercial potential, and had instead hoped for action scenes similar to his previous films. They approved the project as they hoped for a long-term relationship with Cameron.
Cameron convinced Fox to promote the film based on the publicity afforded by shooting the Titanic wreck, and organized several dives over a period of two years. He also convinced Fox that shooting the real wreck for the film scenes, instead of simulating it with special effects, would provide value: "We can either do [the shots] with elaborate models and motion control shots and CG and all that, which will cost X amount of money – or we can spend X plus 30 per cent and actually go shoot it at the real wreck."
The crew shot at the wreck in the Atlantic Ocean 12 times in 1995. The work was risky, as the water pressure could kill the crew if there were a tiny flaw in the submersible structure. Additionally, adverse conditions prevented Cameron from getting footage. During one dive, one of the submersibles collided with Titanic's hull, damaging both sub and ship, and leaving fragments of the submersible's propeller shroud scattered around the superstructure. The external bulkhead of the captain's quarters collapsed, exposing the interior, and the area around the entrance to the Grand Staircase was damaged.
Descending to the site emphasized to the crew that the Titanic disaster was not simply a story but a real event with real loss of life. Cameron said: "Working around the wreck for so much time, you get such a strong sense of the profound sadness and injustice of it, and the message of it." He felt a "great mantle of responsibility" to convey the emotional message of the story, as he was aware there might never be another filmmaker to visit the wreck.
Cameron felt the Titanic sinking was "like a great novel that really happened", but that the event had become a mere morality tale; the film would give audiences the experience of living the history. The treasure hunter Brock Lovett represented those who never connected with the human element of the tragedy. He believed that the romance of Jack and Rose would be the most engaging element: when their love is finally destroyed, the audience would mourn the loss. He said: "All my films are love stories, but in Titanic I finally got the balance right. It's not a disaster film. It's a love story with a fastidious overlay of real history."
After filming the underwater shots, Cameron began writing the screenplay. He wanted to honor the people who died, and spent six months researching the Titanic's crew and passengers. He created a detailed timeline of the events of the voyage and sinking and had it verified by historical experts. From the beginning of the shoot, the team had "a very clear picture" of what happened on the ship. Cameron said "That set the bar higher in a way – it elevated the movie in a sense. We wanted this to be a definitive visualization of this moment in history as if you'd gone back in a time machine and shot it." Cameron was influenced by the 1958 British film about Titanic, A Night to Remember, which he had seen as a youth. He liberally copied some dialogue and scenes, including the lively party of the passengers in steerage, and the musicians playing on the deck during the sinking.
Cameron framed the romance with the elderly Rose to make the intervening years palpable and poignant. While Winslet and Stuart believed Rose dies at the end of the film, Cameron said "the answer has to be something you supply personally; individually".
Harland & Wolff, Titanic's builders, opened their private archives to the crew, sharing blueprints that were previously thought lost. For the ship's interiors, production designer Peter Lamont's team looked for artifacts from the era. The newness of the ship meant every prop had to be made from scratch. Fox acquired 40 acres of waterfront south of Playas de Rosarito in Mexico and began building a new studio on May 31, 1996. A horizon tank of 17 million gallons was built for the exterior of the reconstructed ship, providing 270 degrees of ocean view. The ship was built to full scale, but Lamont removed redundant sections on the superstructure and forward well deck for the ship to fit in the tank, with the remaining sections filled with digital models. The lifeboats and funnels were shrunk by ten percent. The boat deck and A-deck were working sets, but the rest of the ship was steel plating. Within was a 50-foot lifting platform for the ship to tilt during the sinking sequences. The 60-foot 1/8th scale model of the stern section was designed by the naval architect Jay Kantola using plans of the Titanic's sister ship RMS Olympic. Above the model was a 162-foot-tall (49 m) tower crane on 600 feet (180 m) of rail track, acting as a combined construction, lighting, and camera platform.
The sets representing the interior rooms of the Titanic were reproduced exactly using photographs and plans from the Titanic's builders. The Grand Staircase, which features prominently in the film, was recreated to a high standard, though it was widened 30% compared to the original and reinforced with steel girders. Craftsmen from Mexico and Britain sculpted the ornate paneling and plasterwork based on Titanic's original designs. The carpeting, upholstery, individual pieces of furniture, light fixtures, chairs, cutlery and crockery with the White Star Line crest on each piece were among the objects recreated according to original designs. Cameron hired two Titanic historians, Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, to authenticate the historical detail.
Principal photography began on July 31, 1996 at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with the modern-day expedition scenes aboard the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh. In September 1996, the production moved to the newly built Fox Baja Studios in Rosarito, Mexico, where a full-scale Titanic had been constructed. The poop deck was built on a hinge that could rise from zero to 90 degrees in a few seconds, just as the ship's stern rose during the sinking. For the safety of the stuntmen, many props were made of foam rubber. By November 15, the boarding scenes were being shot. Cameron built his Titanic on the starboard side as a study of weather data revealed it was a prevailing north-to-south wind, which blew the funnel smoke aft. This posed a problem for shooting the ship's departure from Southampton, as it was docked on its port side. Implementation of written directions, as well as props and costumes, had to be reversed; for example, if someone walked to their right in the script, they had to walk left during shooting. In post-production, the film was flipped to the correct direction. A full-time etiquette coach was hired to instruct the cast in the manners of the upper class gentility in 1912. Despite this, several critics noted anachronisms in the film.
Cameron sketched Jack's portrait of Rose; Winslet posed in a bathing suit. Cameron felt the scene had a backdrop of repression and freedom: "You know what it means for her, the freedom she must be feeling. It's kind of exhilarating for that reason," he said. The sketching scene was DiCaprio and Winslet's first scene together. "It wasn't by any kind of design, although I couldn't have designed it better. There's a nervousness and an energy and a hesitance in them," Cameron stated. "They had rehearsed together, but they hadn't shot anything together. If I'd had a choice, I probably would have preferred to put it deeper into the body of the shoot." Cameron said he and his crew "were just trying to find things to shoot" because the big set "wasn't ready for months, so we were scrambling around trying to fill in anything we could get to shoot." Cameron felt the final scene worked well.
The shoot was an arduous experience that "cemented Cameron's formidable reputation as 'the scariest man in Hollywood". He became known as an "uncompromising, hard-charging perfectionist" and a "300-decibel screamer, a modern-day Captain Bligh with a megaphone and walkie-talkie, swooping down into people's faces on a 162ft crane". Winslet chipped a bone in her elbow during filming and had been worried that she would drown in the 17m-gallon water tank in which the ship would sink. "There were times when I was genuinely frightened of him. Jim has a temper like you wouldn't believe," she said. "'God damn it!' he would yell at some poor crew member, 'That's exactly what I didn't want!'" Bill Paxton was familiar with Cameron's work ethic from his earlier experience, and said: "There were a lot of people on the set. Jim is not one of those guys who has the time to win hearts and minds." The crew felt Cameron had an evil alter ego and so nicknamed him "Mij" (Jim spelled backwards). In response to the criticism, Cameron said, "Film-making is war. A great battle between business and aesthetics." More than 800 crew members worked on the film.
On August 9, 1996, during the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh shoot in Canada, an unknown person, suspected to be a crew member, put the dissociative drug PCP into the soup that Cameron and various others ate one night in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. It sent more than 50 people to the hospital. Paxton and Cameron ate the soup and went to the hospital but Paxton decided to leave, telling Cameron "Jim, I'm not gonna hang out here, this is bedlam. I'm gonna ... wander back down to the set and just drink a case of beer." "There were people just rolling around, completely out of it. Some of them said they were seeing streaks and psychedelics," said actor Lewis Abernathy. Cameron managed to vomit before the drug took a full hold. Abernathy was shocked at the way he looked. "One eye was completely red, like the Terminator eye. A pupil, no iris, beet red. The other eye looked like he'd been sniffing glue since he was four." The Nova Scotia Department of Health confirmed that the soup had contained PCP on August 27, and the Halifax Regional Police Service announced a criminal investigation the next day. The investigation was closed in February 1999. The person behind the poisoning was never caught.
The filming schedule was intended to last 138 days but grew to 160 (filming officially wrapped on March 23, 1997). Many cast members came down with colds, flu, or kidney infections after spending hours in cold water, including Winslet. In the end, she decided she would not work with Cameron again unless she earned "a lot of money". Several others left the production, and three stuntmen broke their bones, but the Screen Actors Guild decided, following an investigation, that nothing was inherently unsafe about the set. Additionally, DiCaprio said there was no point when he felt he was in danger during filming. Cameron believed in a passionate work ethic and never apologized for the way he ran his sets, although he acknowledged:
The costs of filming Titanic ballooned and eventually reached $200 million, a bit over $1 million per minute of screen time. Fox executives panicked and suggested an hour of specific cuts from the three-hour film. They argued the extended length would mean fewer showings, thus less revenue, even though long epics are more likely to help directors win Oscars. Cameron refused, telling Fox, "You want to cut my movie? You're going to have to fire me! You want to fire me? You're going to have to kill me!" The executives did not want to start over, because it would mean the loss of their entire investment. The executives initially rejected Cameron's offer to forfeit his share of the profits as an empty gesture, as they predicted profits would be unlikely. Worried about the mounting costs, Fox wanted to find a partner studio to co-finance the film. Fox first approached Universal Pictures as they had picked up the international distribution rights to Cameron's True Lies (1994) when production costs began to mount; however Universal would turn Fox down. Instead, Fox and Paramount Pictures came together in May 1996 following the success both studios had collaborating on the distribution for Mel Gibson's Braveheart (1995), and ultimately agreed to co-finance the film together and split the distribution rights. In an effort to recoup their $135 million investment, Fox sold the domestic rights to the film to Paramount in return for Paramount providing Fox an additional $65 million for production, while retaining international rights; Fox however would still be responsible for any further budget overruns going forward, but also retain all profits from any merchandise sold based on the film as part of the deal with Paramount.
Cameron explained forfeiting his share as complex. "... the short version is that the film cost proportionally much more than T2 and True Lies. Those films went up seven or eight percent from the initial budget. Titanic also had a large budget to begin with, but it went up a lot more," he said. "As the producer and director, I take responsibility for the studio that's writing the checks, so I made it less painful for them. I did that on two different occasions. They didn't force me to do it; they were glad that I did." Amidst the film's successful box office run, a Fox executive, William Mechanic, commented that "Jim Cameron told us we could have an expensive bad movie or a more expensive potentially great movie. We made our judgment. And we made the best choice."
In July 2024, Cameron stated that it was actually co-producer Jon Landau who "bore the brunt of the studio pressure" when Titanic was being made. According to Cameron, Landau "gave his all to provide the time and resources for me to make the film I saw in my head."
Cameron wanted to push the boundary of special effects, and enlisted Digital Domain and Pacific Data Images to continue the developments in digital technology he pioneered on The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Many previous films about Titanic shot water in slow motion, which did not look wholly convincing. Cameron encouraged his crew to shoot their 45-foot-long (14 m) miniature of the ship as if "we're making a commercial for the White Star Line". Afterwards, digital water and smoke were added, as were extras captured on a motion capture stage. Visual effects supervisor Rob Legato scanned the faces of many actors, including himself and his children, for the digital extras and stuntmen. There was also a 65-foot-long (20 m) model of the ship's stern that could break in two repeatedly, the only miniature to be used in water. For scenes set in the ship's engines, footage of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien's engines were composited with miniature support frames, and actors shot against a greenscreen. In order to save money, the first-class lounge was a miniature set incorporated into a greenscreen backdrop behind the actors. The miniature of the Lounge would later be crushed to simulate the destruction of the room and a scale model of a First-Class corridor flooded with jets of water while the camera pans out.
An enclosed 5,000,000-US-gallon (19,000,000 L) tank was used for sinking interiors, in which the entire set could be tilted into the water. In order to sink the Grand Staircase, 90,000 US gallons (340,000 L) of water were dumped into the set as it was lowered into the tank. Unexpectedly, the waterfall ripped the staircase from its steel-reinforced foundations, although no one was hurt. The 744-foot-long (227 m) exterior of Titanic had its first half lowered into the tank, but as the heaviest part of the ship it acted as a shock absorber against the water; to get the set into the water, Cameron had much of the set emptied and even smashed some of the promenade windows himself. After submerging the dining saloon, three days were spent shooting Lovett's ROV traversing the wreck in the present. The post-sinking scenes in the freezing Atlantic were shot in a 350,000-US-gallon (1,300,000 L) tank, where the frozen corpses were created by applying on actors a powder that crystallized when exposed to water, and wax was coated on hair and clothes.
The climactic scene, which features the breakup of the ship directly before it sinks as well as its final plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic, involved a tilting full-sized set, 150 extras, and 100 stunt performers. Cameron criticized previous Titanic films for depicting the liner's final plunge as a graceful slide underwater. He "wanted to depict it as the terrifyingly chaotic event that it really was". When carrying out the sequence, people needed to fall off the increasingly tilting deck, plunging hundreds of feet below and bouncing off railings and propellers on the way down. A few attempts to film this sequence with stunt artists resulted in some minor injuries, and Cameron halted the more dangerous stunts. The risks were eventually minimized "by using computer-generated people for the dangerous falls". A Linux-based operating system was utilized for the creation of the effects.
Cameron said there were aspects of the Titanic story that seemed important in pre- and post-production but became less important as the film evolved. He omitted the SS Californian, the ship that was close to the Titanic the night she sank but had turned off its radio for the night, did not hear her crew's SOS calls, and did not respond to their distress flares. A scene involving the Californian was cut, according to Cameron, "because it focuses you back onto that world. If Titanic is powerful as a metaphor, as a microcosm, for the end of the world in a sense, then that world must be self-contained." He said its omission was not "a compromise to mainstream filmmaking" but "about emphasis, creating an emotional truth to the film".
During the first assembly cut, Cameron altered the ending. In the original version, Brock and Lizzy see the elderly Rose at the stern of the boat and fear she is going to commit suicide. Rose reveals that she had the Heart of the Ocean diamond all along but never sold it, to live on her own without Cal's money. She allows Brock to hold it but tells Brock that life is priceless and throws the diamond into the ocean. After accepting that treasure is worthless, Brock laughs at his stupidity. In the editing room, Cameron decided that by this point, the audience would no longer be interested in Brock Lovett and cut the scene, so that Rose is alone when she drops the diamond. He also did not want to disrupt the audience's melancholy after the Titanic's sinking. Paxton agreed that his scene with Brock's epiphany and laugh was unnecessary, saying "I would have shot heroin to make the scene work better ... Our job was done by then ... If you're smart and you take the ego and the narcissism out of it, you'll listen to the film, and the film will tell you what it needs and what it does not need."
The version used for the first test screening featured a fight between Jack and Lovejoy after Jack and Rose escape into the flooded dining saloon. The scene was written to give the film more suspense, and had Cal offering to give Lovejoy, his valet, the Heart of the Ocean if he can get it from Jack and Rose. Lovejoy goes after the pair in the sinking first-class dining room. Jack attacks him and smashes his head against a window; this is why Lovejoy has a gash later in the film. Test audiences said it would be unrealistic to risk one's life for wealth, and Cameron cut it for this reason, as well as for timing and pacing reasons. Many other scenes were cut for similar reasons.
For the Heart of the Ocean design, London-based jewelers Asprey & Garrard used cubic zirconias set in white gold to create an Edwardian-style necklace to be used as a prop in the film. The studio designed and produced three variations, very similar but unique and distinguishable in character. Two of them were used in the film while the third went unused until after the film had been released. The three necklaces are commonly known as the original prop, the J. Peterman necklace and the Asprey necklace.
The third and final design was not used in the film. After the film's success, Asprey & Garrard were commissioned to create an authentic Heart of the Ocean necklace using the original design. The result was a platinum-set, 171-carat (34.2 g) heart-shaped Ceylon sapphire surrounded by 103 diamonds. This design featured a much larger inverted pear-shaped Ceylon sapphire with a subtle cleft to resemble a heart. The chain for this necklace also featured a mix of round, pear, and marquise cut white diamonds. The bail also featured a heart cut white diamond with another round cut diamond attached to an inverted pear shape diamond which was then attached to the cage of the main stone. The necklace was donated to Sotheby's auction house in Beverly Hills for an auction benefiting the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and Southern California's Aid For AIDS. It was sold to an unidentified Asprey client for $1.4 million (equivalent to $2.7 million in 2024), under the agreement that Dion would wear it two nights later at the 1998 Academy Awards ceremony. Since then, this necklace has not been made available for public viewing.
Cameron wrote Titanic while listening to the work of the Irish new-age musician Enya. After Enya declined an invitation to compose for the film, Cameron instead chose James Horner. The two had parted ways after a tumultuous working experience on Aliens, but Titanic cemented a successful collaboration that lasted until Horner's death. For the vocals heard throughout the film, Horner chose the Norwegian singer Sissel Kyrkjebø, commonly known as "Sissel". Horner knew Sissel from her album Innerst i sjelen, and particularly liked how she sang "Eg veit i himmerik ei borg" ("I Know in Heaven There Is a Castle"). He tried around 30 singers before choosing Sissel.
Horner wrote the end theme, "My Heart Will Go On", in secret with Will Jennings because Cameron did not want any songs in the film. Céline Dion agreed to record a demo at the persuasion of her husband René Angélil. Horner waited until Cameron was in an appropriate mood before presenting him with the song. After playing it several times, Cameron declared his approval, although worried that he would have been criticized for "going commercial at the end of the movie". Cameron also wanted to appease anxious studio executives and "saw that a hit song from his movie could only be a positive factor in guaranteeing its completion".
The soundtrack was the best-selling album of 1998 with sales of over 27 million.
Distribution for Titanic was split between Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox; Paramount handling the domestic distribution, and Fox handling the foreign release. Both studios expected Cameron to complete the film for a release on July 2, 1997. The film was to be released on this date "to exploit the lucrative summer season ticket sales when blockbuster films usually do better". In April, Cameron said the film's special effects were too complicated and that releasing the film on that date would not be possible. The studios considered pushing the film to late July or the first week of August, but Harrison Ford, whose film Air Force One was to be released on July 25, is reported to have informed Paramount, which had produced his lucrative Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan franchises, that he would never work with them again if they released Titanic so close to his own film. On May 29, 1997, Paramount pushed back the release date to December 19, 1997. The film's new release date would be shared by Tomorrow Never Dies and Mouse Hunt. "This fueled speculation that the film itself was a disaster." A preview screening in Minneapolis on July 14 "generated positive reviews" and "[c]hatter on the internet was responsible for more favorable word of mouth about the [film]". This eventually led to more positive media coverage.
Cameron refused to hold the film's world premiere in Los Angeles. Paramount disagreed with Cameron's decision, but Fox acquiesced and went ahead and held the premiere on November 1, 1997, at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where reaction was described as "tepid" by The New York Times. Positive reviews started to appear back in the United States; the official Hollywood premiere occurred on December 14, 1997, where "the big movie stars who attended the opening were enthusiastically gushing about the film to the world media".
Including revenue from the 2012, 2017 and 2023 reissues, Titanic earned $674.3 million in North America and $1.583 billion in other countries, for a worldwide total of $2.257 billion. It became the highest-grossing film of all time worldwide in 1998, beating Jurassic Park (1993). The film remained so for twelve years, until Avatar (2009), also written and directed by Cameron, surpassed it in 2010. It would hold the record for being Paramount's highest-grossing film domestically until it was dethroned by Top Gun: Maverick (2022) twenty-five years later. On March 1, 1998, it became the first film to earn more than $1 billion worldwide and on the weekend April 13–15, 2012—a century after the original vessel's foundering, Titanic became the second film to cross the $2 billion threshold during its 3D re-release. Box Office Mojo estimates that Titanic is the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time in North America when adjusting for ticket price inflation. The site also estimates that the film sold over 128 million tickets in the US in its initial theatrical run.
Titanic was the first foreign-language film to succeed in India, which claims to have the largest movie-going audience in the world. A Hindustan Times report attributes this to the film's similarities and shared themes with most Bollywood films.
Titanic received steady attendance after opening in North America on Friday, December 19, 1997. By the end of that same weekend, theaters were beginning to sell out. The film earned $8,658,814 on its opening day and $28,638,131 over the opening weekend from 2,674 theaters, averaging to about $10,710 per venue, and ranking number one at the box office, ahead of Mouse Hunt, Scream 2 and Tomorrow Never Dies. It would go on to surpass The Godfather Part III's record for having the highest Christmas Day gross, generating a total of $9.2 million. For its second weekend, the film made $35.6 million, making it the biggest December weekend gross, surpassing Scream 2. By New Year's Day, Titanic had made over $120 million, had increased in popularity and theaters continued to sell out. In just 44 days, it became the fastest film to approach the $300 million mark at the domestic box office, surpassing the former record held by Jurassic Park, which took 67 days to do so. Titanic would hold this record until 1999 when it was taken by Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Additionally, the film reached the $400 million mark within 66 days, which was the fastest at the time, a record that would be matched by Spider-Man in 2002. Both films would remain so until they were surpassed in 2004 by Shrek 2.
Titanic's highest grossing single day was Saturday, February 14, 1998, on which it earned $13,048,711, more than eight weeks after its North American debut. On March 14, it surpassed Star Wars as the highest-grossing film ever in North America. It stayed at number one for 15 consecutive weeks in North America, a record for any film. By April 1998, the film's number one spot would be overtaken by Lost in Space, dropping into second place. The film stayed in theaters in North America for almost 10 months before finally closing on Thursday, October 1, 1998, with a final domestic gross of $600,788,188, equivalent to $1176.8 million in 2024. Outside North America, the film made double its North American gross, generating $1,242,413,080 and accumulating a grand total of $1,843,201,268 worldwide from its initial theatrical run.
Before Titanic's release, various film critics predicted the film would be a significant disappointment at the box office, especially since it was the most expensive film ever made at the time. When it was shown to the press in autumn of 1997, "it was with massive forebodings", since the "people in charge of the screenings believed they were on the verge of losing their jobs – because of this great albatross of a picture on which, finally, two studios had to combine to share the great load of its making". Cameron also thought he was "headed for disaster" at one point during filming. "We labored the last six months on Titanic in the absolute knowledge that the studio would lose $100 million. It was a certainty," he stated. As the film neared release, "particular venom was spat at Cameron for what was seen as his hubris and monumental extravagance". A film critic for the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Cameron's overweening pride has come close to capsizing this project" and that the film was "a hackneyed, completely derivative copy of old Hollywood romances".
When the film became a success, with an unprecedented box-office performance, it was credited for being a love story that captured its viewers' emotions. The film was playing on 3,200 screens ten weeks after it opened, and out of its fifteen straight weeks on top of the charts, jumped 43% in total sales in its ninth week of release. It earned over $20 million for each of its first 10 weekends, and after 14 weeks was still bringing in more than $1 million on weekdays. 20th Century Fox estimated that seven percent of American teenage girls had seen Titanic twice by its fifth week. Although young women who saw the film several times and subsequently caused "Leo-Mania" were often credited with having primarily propelled the film to its all-time box office record, other reports have attributed the film's success to positive word of mouth and repeat viewership due to the love story combined with the ground-breaking special effects. The Hollywood Reporter estimated that after a combined production and promotion cost of $487 million, the film turned a net profit of $1.4 billion, with a modern profit of as much as $4 billion after ancillary sources.
Titanic's impact on men has also been especially credited. It is considered one of the films that make men cry, with MSNBC's Ian Hodder stating that men admire Jack's sense of adventure and his ambitious behavior to win over Rose, which contributes to their emotional attachment to Jack. The film's ability to make men cry was briefly parodied in the 2009 film Zombieland, where character Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), when recalling the death of his young son, states: "I haven't cried like that since Titanic."
Scott Meslow of The Atlantic stated while Titanic initially seems to need no defense, given its success, it is considered a film "for 15-year-old girls" by its main detractors. He argued that dismissing Titanic as fodder for teenage girls fails to consider the film's accomplishment: "that [this] grandiose, 3+ hour historical romantic drama is a film for everyone—including teenage boys." Meslow stated that despite the film being ranked high by males under the age of 18, matching the ratings for teenage boy-targeted films like Iron Man, it is common for boys and men to deny liking Titanic. He acknowledged his own rejection of the film as a child while secretly loving it. "It's this collection of elements—the history, the romance, the action—that made (and continues to make) Titanic an irresistible proposition for audiences of all ages across the globe," he stated. "Titanic has flaws, but for all its legacy, it's better than its middlebrow reputation would have you believe. It's a great movie for 15-year-old girls, but that doesn't mean it's not a great movie for everyone else too."
Quotes in the film aided its popularity. Titanic's catchphrase "I'm the king of the world!" became one of the film industry's more popular quotations. According to Richard Harris, a psychology professor at Kansas State University, who studied why people like to cite films in social situations, using film quotations in everyday conversation is similar to telling a joke and a way to form solidarity with others. "People are doing it to feel good about themselves, to make others laugh, to make themselves laugh", he said.
Cameron explained the film's success as having significantly benefited from the experience of sharing. "When people have an experience that's very powerful in the movie theatre, they want to go share it. They want to grab their friend and bring them, so that they can enjoy it," he said. "They want to be the person to bring them the news that this is something worth having in their life. That's how Titanic worked." Media Awareness Network stated, "The normal repeat viewing rate for a blockbuster theatrical film is about 5%. The repeat rate for Titanic was over 20%." The box office receipts "were even more impressive" when factoring in "the film's 3-hour-and-14-minute length meant that it could only be shown three times a day compared to a normal movie's four showings". In response to this, "[m]any theatres started midnight showings and were rewarded with full houses until almost 3:30 am".
Titanic held the record for box office gross for 12 years. Cameron's follow-up film, Avatar, was considered the first film with a genuine chance at surpassing its worldwide gross, and did so in 2010. Various explanations for why the film was able to successfully challenge Titanic were given. For one, "Two-thirds of Titanic's haul was earned overseas, and Avatar [tracked] similarly ... Avatar opened in 106 markets globally and was no. 1 in all of them" and the markets "such as Russia, where Titanic saw modest receipts in 1997 and 1998, are white-hot today" with "more screens and moviegoers" than ever before. Brandon Gray, president of Box Office Mojo, said that while Avatar may beat Titanic's revenue record, the film is unlikely to surpass Titanic in attendance. "Ticket prices were about $3 cheaper in the late 1990s." In December 2009, Cameron had stated, "I don't think it's realistic to try to topple Titanic off its perch. Some pretty good movies have come out in the last few years. Titanic just struck some kind of chord." In a January 2010 interview, he gave a different take on the matter once Avatar's performance was easier to predict, saying "It's gonna happen. It's just a matter of time,".
Author Alexandra Keller, when analyzing Titanic's success, stated that scholars could agree that the film's popularity "appears dependent on contemporary culture, on perceptions of history, on patterns of consumerism and globalization, as well as on those elements experienced filmgoers conventionally expect of juggernaut film events in the 1990s – awesome screen spectacle, expansive action, and, more rarely seen, engaging characters and epic drama."
Titanic garnered mostly positive reviews from film critics, and was positively reviewed by audiences and scholars, who commented on the film's cultural, historical, and political impacts. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 88% based on 255 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A mostly unqualified triumph for James Cameron, who offers a dizzying blend of spectacular visuals and old-fashioned melodrama." Metacritic, which assigned a weighted average score of 75 out of 100, based on 35 critics, reports the film has "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade, one of fewer than 60 films in the history of the service from 1982 to 2011 to earn the score.
With regard to the film's overall design, Roger Ebert stated: "It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted, and spellbinding ... Movies like this are not merely difficult to make at all, but almost impossible to make well." He credited the "technical difficulties" with being "so daunting that it's a wonder when the filmmakers are also able to bring the drama and history into proportion" and "found [himself] convinced by both the story and the sad saga". He named it his ninth-best film of 1997. On the television program Siskel & Ebert, the film received "two thumbs up" and was praised for its accuracy in recreating the ship's sinking; Ebert described the film as "a glorious Hollywood epic" and "well worth the wait," and Gene Siskel found Leonardo DiCaprio "captivating".
James Berardinelli stated: "Meticulous in detail, yet vast in scope and intent, Titanic is the kind of epic motion picture event that has become a rarity. You don't just watch Titanic, you experience it." It was named his second best film of 1997. Joseph McBride of Boxoffice Magazine concluded: "To describe Titanic as the greatest disaster movie ever made is to sell it short. James Cameron's recreation of the 1912 sinking of the 'unsinkable' liner is one of the most magnificent pieces of serious popular entertainment ever to emanate from Hollywood."
The romantic and emotionally charged aspects of the film were equally praised. Andrew L. Urban of Urban Cinefile said: "You will walk out of Titanic not talking about budget or running time, but of its enormous emotive power, big as the engines of the ship itself, determined as its giant propellers to gouge into your heart, and as lasting as the love story that propels it." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly described the film as "a lush and terrifying spectacle of romantic doom. Writer-director James Cameron has restaged the defining catastrophe of the early 20th century on a human scale of such purified yearning and dread that he touches the deepest levels of popular moviemaking." Janet Maslin of The New York Times commented that "Cameron's magnificent Titanic is the first spectacle in decades that honestly invites comparison to Gone With the Wind." Adrian Turner of Radio Times awarded it four stars out of five, stating "Cameron's script wouldn't have sustained Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh for 80 minutes, but, somehow, he and his magical cast revive that old-style studio gloss for three riveting hours. Titanic is a sumptuous assault on the emotions, with a final hour that fully captures the horror and the freezing, paralysing fear of the moment. And there are single shots, such as an awesome albatross-like swoop past the steaming ship, when you sense Cameron hugging himself with the fun of it all."
Titanic suffered backlash in addition to its success. Some reviewers felt that while the visuals were spectacular, the story and dialogue were weak. Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote a mostly negative review, criticizing the lack of interesting emotional elements. Kenneth Turan's review in the Los Angeles Times was particularly scathing. Dismissing the emotive elements, he stated, "What really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only is it not, it is not even close." He later argued that the only reason that the film won Oscars was because of its box office total. Barbara Shulgasser of The San Francisco Examiner gave Titanic one star out of four, citing a friend as saying, "The number of times in this unbelievably badly written script that the two [lead characters] refer to each other by name was an indication of just how dramatically the script lacked anything more interesting for the actors to say."
According to Dalin Rowell of /Film, "With complaints about its lengthy runtime, observations that certain characters could have easily fit onto pieces of floating furniture, and jokes about its melodramatic nature, Titanic is no stranger to modern-day criticism." In 2002, filmmaker Robert Altman called it "the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life". Similarly, French New Wave director and former Cahiers du Cinéma editor Jacques Rivette referred to it as "garbage" in a 1998 interview with Frédéric Bonnaud and was particularly critical of Winslet's performance, who he said was "unwatchable, the most slovenly girl to appear on the screen in a long, long time." In 2003, the film topped a poll of "Best Film Endings", but it also topped a poll by Film 2003 as "the worst movie of all time".
In his 2012 study of the lives of the passengers on the Titanic, historian Richard Davenport-Hines said, "Cameron's film diabolized rich Americans and educated English, anathematizing their emotional restraint, good tailoring, punctilious manners and grammatical training, while it made romantic heroes of the poor Irish and the unlettered." The British film magazine Empire reduced their rating of the film from the maximum five stars and an enthusiastic review, to four stars with a less positive review in a later edition, to accommodate its readers' tastes, who wanted to disassociate themselves from the hype surrounding the film, and the reported activities of its fans, such as those attending multiple screenings. In addition to this, positive and negative parodies and other such spoofs of the film abounded and were circulated on the internet, often inspiring passionate responses from fans of various opinions of the film. Benjamin Willcock of DVDActive.com did not understand the backlash or the passionate hatred for the film. "What really irks me ...," he said, "are those who make nasty stabs at those who do love it." Willcock stated, "I obviously don't have anything against those who dislike Titanic, but those few who make you feel small and pathetic for doing so (and they do exist, trust me) are way beyond my understanding and sympathy."
In 1998, Cameron responded to the backlash, and Kenneth Turan's review in particular, by writing "Titanic is not a film that is sucking people in with flashy hype and spitting them out onto the street feeling let down and ripped off. They are returning again and again to repeat an experience that is taking a 3-hour and 14-minute chunk out of their lives, and dragging others with them, so they can share the emotion." Cameron emphasized that people from all ages (ranging from 8 to 80) and from all backgrounds were "celebrating their own essential humanity" by seeing it. He described the script as earnest and straightforward, and said it intentionally "incorporates universals of human experience and emotion that are timeless – and familiar because they reflect our basic emotional fabric" and that the film was able to succeed in this way by dealing with archetypes. He did not see it as pandering. "Turan mistakes archetype for cliché," he said. "I don't share his view that the best scripts are only the ones that explore the perimeter of human experience, or flashily pirouette their witty and cynical dialogue for our admiration."
In 2000, Almar Haflidason of the BBC wrote that "the critical knives were out long before James Cameron's Titanic was complete. Spiralling costs that led to it becoming the most expensive motion picture of the 20th Century, and a cast without any big stars seemed to doom the film before release. But box office and audience appreciation proved Cameron right and many critics wrong." He added that "the sinking of the great ship is no secret, yet for many exceeded expectations in sheer scale and tragedy" and that "when you consider that [the film] tops a bum-numbing three-hour running time, then you have a truly impressive feat of entertainment achieved by Cameron". Empire eventually reinstated its original five-star rating of the film, commenting: "It should be no surprise[,] then[,] that it became fashionable to bash James Cameron's Titanic at approximately the same time it became clear that this was the planet's favourite film. Ever."
In 2017, on the 20th anniversary of its release, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The same year, Cameron reviewed the accuracy of the film for the National Geographic program Titanic: 20 Years Later with James Cameron.
The film's climax has sparked many debates over the years on whether both Jack and Rose should have been able to fit on the floating door and survive, becoming among the most talked about aspects of the film. While at the time of the film's 20th anniversary Cameron stated that it was "kind of silly, really, that we’re having this discussion 20 years later," in 2023 he conducted a study for the film's 25th anniversary that aired as part of an updated National Geographic retrospective, which suggested it was possible but unlikely and depended on numerous variables., after a previous test had been conducted in 2012 by MythBusters.
It was listed among the 100 best films in an Empire poll and in a later poll of members of the film industry. In 2021, Dalin Rowell of /Film ranked it the third-best film of Cameron's career, stating that it is "easily one of his best films, simply because it defied the odds", and considering it "a legitimately remarkable achievement — one that, despite its large budget, has a humble, earnest center. Even with all of the jokes the Internet loves to throw its way, Titanic demonstrates that Cameron is truly capable of everything he can imagine."
In 2024, Looper ranked it number 44 on its list of the "50 Best PG-13 Movies of All Time," writing
At the Golden Globes, Titanic won Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song. Winslet and Stuart were also nominated. At the 70th Academy Awards, Titanic garnered fourteen Academy Award nominations, tying the record set in 1950 by Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve and won eleven: Best Picture (the second film about the Titanic to win that award, after 1933's Cavalcade), Best Director, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Sound (Gary Rydstrom, Tom Johnson, Gary Summers, Mark Ulano), Best Sound Effects Editing, Best Original Dramatic Score, Best Original Song. Winslet, Stuart and the make-up artists were nominated, but lost to Helen Hunt in As Good as It Gets, Kim Basinger in L.A. Confidential and Men in Black. Titanic was the second film to receive eleven Academy Awards, after Ben-Hur (1959). The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King matched the record in 2004. In 2017, La La Land would tie the record for having the most Academy Award nominations.
Titanic won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Original Song, as well as four Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. The soundtrack became the best-selling primarily orchestral soundtrack of all time, spending sixteen weeks at number-one in the United States, and was certified diamond for over eleven million copies sold in the United States alone. It was also the best-selling album of 1998 in the US. "My Heart Will Go On" won the Grammy Awards for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or for Television.
Titanic also won various awards outside the United States, including the Awards of the Japanese Academy as the Best Foreign Film of the Year. It eventually won nearly ninety awards and had an additional forty-seven nominations from various award-giving bodies around the world. The book about the making of the film was at the top of The New York Times' bestseller list for several weeks, "the first time that such a tie-in book had achieved this status".
Titanic has appeared on the American Film Institute's award-winning 100 Years ... series six times.
Titanic was released worldwide in widescreen and pan and scan formats on VHS on September 1, 1998. There are two separate cassettes on this release, as the film is divided into two parts. More than $50 million was spent to market the home video release of the film. Both VHS formats were also made available in a deluxe boxed gift set with a mounted filmstrip and six lithograph prints from the movie. In the first 3 months, the film sold 25 million copies in North America with a total sales value of $500 million, becoming the best selling live-action video, beating Independence Day. In that time, it sold 58 million copies worldwide, outselling The Lion King for a total worldwide revenue of $995 million. By March 2005, the film has sold 8 million DVD and 59 million VHS units. In the United Kingdom, the film sold 1.1 million copies on its first day of release, making it the country's fastest-selling home video release. It would hold this record until it was surpassed by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in May 2002 when that film sold 1.2 million home video units during its first day. The film would also remain as the fastest-selling DVD in the United Kingdom until Mamma Mia! took it in 2008. Within the first week of release, Titanic quickly beat The Full Monty, selling a total of 1.8 million home video copies.
NBC acquired the US television broadcast rights for $30 million, which was considered a bargain.
A DVD version was released on August 31, 1999, in a widescreen-only (non-anamorphic) single-disc edition with no special features other than a theatrical trailer. Cameron stated at the time that he intended to release a special edition with extra features later. This release became the best-selling DVD of 1999 and early 2000, becoming the first DVD ever to sell one million copies. At the time, less than 5% of all U.S. homes had a DVD player. "When we released the original Titanic DVD, the industry was much smaller, and bonus features were not the standard they are now," said Meagan Burrows, Paramount's president of domestic home entertainment, which made the film's DVD performance even more impressive.
Titanic was re-released to DVD on October 25, 2005, when a three-disc Special Collector's Edition was made available in the United States and Canada. This edition contained a newly restored transfer of the film, a 6.1 DTS-ES Discrete surround sound mix and various special features. In PAL regions, two-disc and four-disc variants were released, marketed as the Special Edition and Deluxe Collector's Edition respectively. They were released in the United Kingdom on November 7, 2005. A limited 5-disc set of the film, under the title Deluxe Limited Edition, was also only released in the United Kingdom with only 10,000 copies manufactured. The fifth disc contains Cameron's documentary Ghosts of the Abyss, which was distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Unlike the individual release of Ghosts of the Abyss, which contained two discs, only the first disc was included in the set. In 2007, for the film's tenth anniversary, a 10th Anniversary Edition was released on DVD, which consists of the first two discs from the three-disc 2005 set containing the movie and the special features on those discs.
The film was released by Paramount Home Entertainment on Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D on September 10, 2012. The 3D presentation of the film is split over two discs and is also THX-certified. Special features on another disc included many of those featured on the 2005 Special Collector's Edition DVD along with two new documentaries titled "Reflections on Titanic" and "Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron." The latter aired on National Geographic on April 9, 2012, and was executively produced by Cameron.
A 4K release of the film was released on December 5, 2023, on both digital and Ultra HD Blu-ray.
After previously being on the Amazon Prime Video streaming service in the U.S. in April 2023, the film became available on Netflix in July 2023 shortly after the Titan submersible implosion. The film became available on Paramount+ in October 2023 and on Prime Video for a period starting in April 2024. The film was announced as coming to Hulu in February 2025. It was available on the free ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV in June 2023.
A 2012 3D re-release was created by re-mastering the original to 4K resolution and post-converting to stereoscopic 3D format. The Titanic 3D version took 60 weeks and $18 million to produce, including the 4K restoration. The 3D conversion was performed by Stereo D. Digital 2D and in 2D IMAX versions were also struck from the new 4K master created in the process. The only scene entirely redone for the re-release was Rose's view of the night sky at sea on the morning of April 15, 1912. The scene was replaced with an accurate view of the night-sky star pattern, including the Milky Way, adjusted for the location in the North Atlantic Ocean in April 1912. The change was prompted by the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who had criticized the unrealistic star pattern. He agreed to send Cameron a corrected view of the sky, which was the basis of the new scene.
The 3D version of Titanic premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in London on March 27, 2012, with James Cameron and Kate Winslet in attendance, and entered general release on April 4, 2012, six days before the centenary of Titanic embarking on her maiden voyage.
Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers rated the reissue 3+1⁄2 stars out of 4, explaining he found it "pretty damn dazzling". He said, "The 3D intensifies Titanic. You are there. Caught up like never before in an intimate epic that earns its place in the movie time capsule." Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman gave the film an A grade. He wrote, "For once, the visuals in a 3-D movie don't look darkened or distracting. They look sensationally crisp and alive." Richard Corliss of Time, who was very critical in 1997, remained in the same mood: "I had pretty much the same reaction: fitfully awed, mostly water-logged." In regards to the 3D effects, he noted the "careful conversion to 3D lends volume and impact to certain moments ... [but] in separating the foreground and background of each scene, the converters have carved the visual field into discrete, not organic, levels." Ann Hornaday for The Washington Post found herself asking "whether the film's twin values of humanism and spectacle are enhanced by Cameron's 3-D conversion, and the answer to that is: They aren't." She added that the "3-D conversion creates distance where there should be intimacy, not to mention odd moments in framing and composition."
The film grossed an estimated $4.7 million on the first day of its re-release in North America (including midnight preview showings) and went on to make $17.3 million over the weekend, finishing in third place behind The Hunger Games and American Reunion. Outside North America it earned $35.2 million, finishing second, and it improved on its performance the following weekend by topping the box office with $98.9 million. China has proven to be its most successful territory, where it earned $11.6 million on its opening day, going on to earn a record-breaking $67 million in its opening week and taking more money in the process than it did in the entirety of its original theatrical run.
The reissue earned $343.4 million worldwide, with $145 million coming from China and $57.8 million from Canada and the United States. With a worldwide box office of nearly $350 million, the 3D re-release of Titanic remains the highest grossing re-released film of all time, ahead of The Lion King, Star Wars, and Avatar.
The 3D conversion of the film was also released in the 4DX format in selected international territories, which allows the audience to experience the film's environment using motion, wind, fog, lighting, and scent-based special effects.
For the 20th anniversary of the film, Titanic was re-released in cinemas in Dolby Vision (in both 2D and 3D) for one week beginning December 1, 2017.
Titanic was re-released in theaters by Paramount domestically and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (through the 20th Century Studios and Buena Vista International labels) internationally on February 10, 2023, in a remastered 3D 4K HDR render, with high frame rate, as part of the film's 25th anniversary. For this version, the international prints update 20th Century's logo with the studio's current name, as a result of Disney's 2019 acquisition of the studio.
Titanic Live was a live performance of Horner's original score by a 130-piece orchestra, choir and Celtic musicians, accompanying a showing of the film. In April 2015, Titanic Live premiered at the Royal Albert Hall, London, where the 2012 3D re-release had premiered.