Titanic India 3D 4K HDR release date set for February 10

Titanic, James Cameron’s Oscar-winning 1997 film, returns to theaters on February 10. On Wednesday, Disney-owned 20th Century Studios announced that the disaster romance flick – starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio – will get a theatrical re-release in honor of its 25th anniversary, which also comes just in time for Valentine’s day. (It was originally published in December 1997.) Titanic, which grossed $2.18 billion (about Rs 17,776 crore) across multiple theatrical releases, will now be available in a remastered 4K HDR 3D format in high frame rate (HFR). Disney India has confirmed the format, although it is unsure of the number of 4K 3D HFR screens in the country. The studio also released a new poster and trailer to celebrate of the titanic reissue.

It would not be the first time Titanic received a 3D conversion. In 2012, following the success of Avatar, director Cameron pushed for a 3D reissue of Titanic, which cost $18 million (about Rs. 147 crore) to produce. While most of the process involved remastering the original to 4K resolution, one night sky scene had to be completely redone and spliced, spurred by criticism from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, for showing a star pattern incorrect. It was then followed by a 20th anniversary re-release in December 2017, in both 2D and 3D. The studio is also following the trend of rendering and releasing lower quality Full HD 1080p movie trailers, instead of what is advertised.

During the initial release window, Titanic held the top spot at the box office for 15 consecutive weeks, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time. That is until Cameron broke his own record in 2009, with the CGI-driven visual showcase Avatar, which raised $2.92 billion (around Rs. 23,820) across multiple releases. Earlier this year, the director re-released Avatar once again, in “all formats”, hoping to generate hype for his much-delayed sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water. The latter is currently the seventh greatest film of all time.

Titanic features Winslet and DiCaprio as budding lovers against the ill-fated maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic, the British passenger ship, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. The re-release also gives fans a new perspective on the infamous floating door vs. raft debate – could Jack fit in alongside Rose? Speaking to the Toronto Sun last month, Cameron ended the 25-year-old’s lawsuit, saying he conducted a “scientific study” to prove his case.

“We’ve since done a thorough forensic analysis with a hypothermia expert who replicated the raft from the movie and we’re going to do a little special on it which will be released in February,” Cameron said. “We took two stunt men who had the same body mass as Kate and Leo, and we put sensors all over and inside them and we put them in ice water and we tested to see s ‘they could have survived through a variety of methods and the answer was that there was no way they had both survived. Only one could survive. As of now, there is no concrete release date for the Titanic Special Raft.

Not only was it the very first film to hit the billion dollar mark – upon its original release – Titanic was also critically acclaimed, being nominated for 14 Academy Awards and winning 11 of them.

Titanic returns to theaters on February 10 in India and worldwide.

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