The Oscar-winning filmmaker cleared the air on Instagram, less than a month after the company’s ‘Titan’ submersible implosion
James Cameron is denying rumors that he’s going to be part of an OceanGate-film.
The Academy Award winner shared on his Instagram Story on Saturday that, despite rumors, he will not be working on a movie about the company behind the Titan submersible that imploded during a journey to the Titanic wreckage last month.
“I don’t respond to offensive rumors in the media usually, but I need to now,” the filmmaker wrote to his Instagram fans. “I’m NOT in talks about an OceanGate film, nor will I ever be.”
The Titanic director shared the sentiment on Twitter, too. His statement follows reports from the Daily Mail and The Sun about Cameron allegedly being approached for a series about the Titan submersible disaster.
On June 22, a search for the missing submersible that was traveling to the site of the Titanic wreckage ended when debris was found on the ocean floor that likely was caused by a “catastrophic implosion,” assumed to be that of Titan.
Five people were aboard the Titan when it disappeared and imploded on Father’s Day: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, 61, British Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman Dawood, 19, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77.
Days later, the U.S. Coast Guard revealed that “presumed human remains” were recovered while searching through the wreckage. What was believed to be remains “were carefully recovered” within the wreckage, and the Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) transported them for further analysis and testing.
After OceanGate announced that the passengers were presumed dead, Cameron told ABC News that the diving community was “deeply concerned” about the submersible’s safety even before the expedition.
“A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified,” he said in June.
Cameron also said he couldn’t help but connect the circumstances to those of the Titanic, which sank back in 1912.
“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,” he said.
“For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded,” he added. “To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!
