Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 05, 2023

It was over budget but it made it back and then some a with a box office of $2.2 billion.

I wondered about that, too, when I saw “Titanic.”

“Avatar” was like that, too— a budget bigger than most galaxies, but no script to speak of.

It’s also why they couldn’t afford factcheckers. Besides the (in)famous bit of (was it) Jack standing on the bow of the ship where it’s not possible, there was also the way the film made the radio officer out when, in fact, that dude was a hero.

They could do sequels, the Titanic had two sister ships, one rammed a cruiser and was sunk as a hospital ship after hitting a mine in WWI and the other had a series of misfortunes, sank a U-boat by ramming and a lightship (which is quite hard to do) and finally scrapped in the late 30s. Lots of material there

Good one, Kim!

[nerd alert] Sam Peckinpah once said give him $50,000.00 and Warren Oates and he’d give you a great movie. He then revised it to $100,000.00 because why shouldn’t Oates get to be in a big budget movie?

Before “Titanic” came out, it was widely expected that the movie would have a hard time making back its money. People didn’t expect it to flop but they didn’t think there was much chance it would be very profitable since it was so expensive to make. The big story was how overbudget it was. NObody thought it was going to become a cultural phenomenon.

I think Michael Winner (director of Death Wish and two sequels) said that after the success of The Poseidon Adventure (1972), a sequel was proposed called Raise The Poseidon!, with starry cast and extensive location shooting using full-size ships; a few months’ reconnaisance and budget preparation persuaded the producers to change the script and pitch a cheaper film called Lower The Atlantic!.

As I said a couple of days ago, for all the Academy Awards “Titanic” won, the screenplay wasn’t even nominated.

for anyone who’s interested, there is a riveting book titled “The other side of the Night,” which tells the story of the Titanic from the viewpoint of another ship in the area, one whose captain refused to go to its aid.

This is me. Still clueless. …sigh

This one made me LOL…

I still think that Billy Zane’s performance is forever undervalued…

Reminds me, I read and reviewed “A Night to Remember” last year. Info at the usual place.

Don’t worry. Plenty of other movies where the guy dies for his true love.

I’ve never seen the movie. I hear the dog dies.

(Fun Fact: There were at least 12 dogs on the Titanic, three of which survived: Two Pomeranians and a Pekingese, small enough to be carried onto the lifeboats by their owners. Maybe there’s a movie there…)

Titanic ~ A commercial success, an artistic flop.

ROTFL.

It reminds me of a line in “Futurama”. During the Academy Awards, Bender says they are still doing the technical awards. “I think they’re up to Writing.”

Oh, I’ll bet they could come up with a sequel if they tried. Even Jaws had its (several) sequels.

We did an improv season awhile back and one lady from the audience wanted to see a sequel to Titanic. Turns out, Jack didn’t die. He faked his death to get away from Rose. But she hunts him down, Tarantino style.

Fortunately, Walter Lord and Robert Ballard collaborated… in a roundabout way.

Olympic, Britannic…

They really shouldn’t have built a 100% accurate copy of the Titanic, then, made the mistake of really Sinking it.

They could still be raking in the money charging people to ride it to the Bahamas.

The Titanic had two sister ships: Olympic https://www.titanicmuseum.org/artefact/rms-olympicBritannic:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMHS_Britannic

I wonder whether we’ll see Alex wax on about Avatar 2, in the Sunday strips.

This must have originally come out before they started counting its income.

Nobody’s done The Luisitania Story yet

Also why none of the Avatar films could afford scripts, too.