{"id":205112,"date":"2025-10-16T21:59:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/205112\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T21:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T21:59:09","slug":"how-kurt-russell-steered-titanic-into-being-box-office-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/205112\/","title":{"rendered":"How Kurt Russell steered Titanic into being box office king"},"content":{"rendered":"

You\u2019re gonna need a bigger trailer\u2026James Cameron\u2019s Titanic has a storied history, one we have detailed in multiple videos and articles<\/a>. And while we may all know the tales of the alternate ending and the cast\/crew\u2019s soup being dosed with PCP, one story that hasn\u2019t gotten much attention revolves around none other than Kurt Russell, whose gut reaction to the marketing campaign ensured the movie wouldn\u2019t go overboard.<\/p>\n

As recounted<\/a> in his forthcoming book The Bigger Picture \u2013 published posthumously, as Jon Landau died last year \u2013 the producer said that the length of the trailer for Titanic was throwing an iceberg into meetings. Typically, movie trailers hit the 2:30 mark or so, but for Titanic, that trailer was just over four minutes<\/a>, which of course makes sense if it were to have some sort of link to the finished film\u2019s runtime. But the studio execs weren\u2019t having it. \u201cParamount had taken the same footage and made their own shorter trailer. We called it the John Woo trailer. It was all flash cuts and pounding music, gunshots, and screams. It made the movie look like an action flick that happened to take place on the Titanic. It was not our movie. We went back and forth with Paramount, first reasoning, then screaming\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Following that, the team convinced the studios to let them shop their 4:02 Titanic trailer in front of the National Association of Theatre Owners. \u201cAt the showcase were some of their top executives and biggest names, including Kurt Russell, the star of their upcoming film Breakdown. I sat nervously as our trailer played in that banquet hall in Las Vegas, and just as it ended, Kurt Russell loudly announced, \u2018I\u2019d pay ten dollars just to see that trailer again.\u2019 With that, we got a special dispensation from the Motion Picture Association \u2014 trailers were supposed to be 150 seconds, max \u2014 to release a four-minute-and-two-second trailer to audiences around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

So is Kurt Russell responsible for Titanic being one of the biggest movies in history? Well, we\u2019re not saying James Cameron owes him a bonus<\/a> or anything, but then again we\u2019re massive fans of the man so we have to give him partial credit here!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You\u2019re gonna need a bigger trailer\u2026James Cameron\u2019s Titanic has a storied history, one we have detailed in multiple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,51226,2839,1914,46091,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-205112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-kurt-russell","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-retro","12":"tag-titanic","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}