Titanic opens with a group of treasure hunters (lead by Bill Paxton) searching the wreckage of the Titanic for a diamond called "The Heart of the Ocean." They find the nude drawing of a young woman wearing the diamond necklace. The woman in the drawing (Gloria Stuart) contacts them and tells the story of what happened to her on the Titanic. She was a rich girl (Kate Winslet) who met a poor boy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and falls in love with him. As she tries to cope with her problems with a fianc�e who she does not love and an overbearing mother they collide with an iceberg and take part in one of the greatest disasters in history.
After True Lies James Cameron set off to make the most ambitious project of his career. He had written a script that incorporated both fictional and historical characters into the story of the sinking of the Titanic. He projected a budget of $100 Million.
As Cameron wanted for the majority of the budget to be on the screen he did not want to have to pay large sums of money to expensive "name" actors. He cast DiCaprio who at that time had Romeo & Juliet as his only mainstream credit. Kate Winslet was most well known for two other costume movies "Sense and Sensibility (1995)" for which she received an Academy Award nomination & "Jude (1996)". Cameron regular Bill Paxton appeared as Brock Lovett the treasure hunter.
For the present day story of the treasure hunters Cameron chartered a Russian submersible and made several dives to the wreck of the Titanic and shot some footage at the bottom of the ocean. Just like on The Abyss current technology proved insufficient to capture Cameron's vision so they had to design some new cameras and camera housings capable of withstanding the 400 atmosphere pressure of the Titanic's final resting place.
For some of the shots of the Titanic they constructed a %90 scale model of one half of the Titanic. For the scenes of the ship docked at Southampton they had to make that half appear to be the opposite side of the ship so they had to construct backwards costumes and sign so that when she flipped the image in post-production it everything would appear to be correct. Using both the model and CGI technology they created a seamless appearance of the sinking of the grandest ship in history.
By the end of shoot they had experienced several problems. The budget had swelled from $100 Million to almost $200 Million which set a new record, previously held by Cameron's True Lies. Near the end of the shoot someone spiked the food with PCP and much of the cast and crew was hospitalized. As the release date of Summer 97 was approaching Cameron realized that the film would not be ready and pushed the date back to December 19, 1997. As the release date approached people got apprehensive about the $200 Million chick-flick.
When it did premier it got a bigger reaction than anyone ever thought it could. It received nearly unanimous positive reviews, and unlike most films that open big, than die off this one was number one at the box office for three months. It did not drop to number 2 until Lost In Space which opened April 3. In the end it grossed about $200 Billion. It also got 14 Oscar nominations and 11 wins; tying it with Ben Hur for the most wins.