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July 15 (UPI) — Oscar winner Titanic director james cameron denies media speculation that he was planning to make a film about the OceanGate submersible disaster that killed five people in June.
“I don’t usually respond to offensive rumors in the media, but I need to now. I’m NOT talking about an OceanGate movie, and I never will be,” Cameron tweeted on Saturday.
OceanGate announced earlier this month it had suspended all exploration and commercial operations following the deadly implosion of one of its ships en route to the ocean floor so that its passengers could view the remains of the Titanic, which sank in 1912, causing more than 1,500 deaths.
Cameron – who wrote and directed the classic 1997 film Titanichelped design machines to travel safely and capture rare footage of the wreck and completed 33 dives to visit the remains of the luxury liner – said publicly the OceanGate ship was unsafe and should not have been allowed to take passengers on the trip.
“I am struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned of the presence of ice ahead of his ship and yet he sped off at full speed through an ice field by a moonless night,” Cameron recently told ABC News. .
“And a lot of people have died as a result and for a very similar tragedy where warnings were ignored to take place at the same exact site with all the dives going on all over the world I think it’s just amazing . It’s really quite surreal.”
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was among five victims of the doomed submersible named Titan last month.