James Cameron slams ‘offensive rumours’, confirms he will not be making a film about OceanGate

“I don’t respond to offensive rumours in the media usually, but I need to now,” the Titanic director and deep-sea explorer tweeted Saturday. “I’m NOT in talks about an OceanGate film, nor will I ever be.”

People are speculating that Cameron could direct a film about the disaster, given that he directed the Oscar-winning 1997 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and has made more than 30 visits to the wreck site over the years. Cameron stated last month that he was “struck by the similarity” of the ill-fated ship and the Titanic itself.

“Many people in the community were very concerned about this sub,” he said. “And a number of the top players in the deep-submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers, and it needed to be certified, and so on.”

OceanGate Expeditions issued a statement last month saying it suspected all five people aboard the submersible were dead after a days-long search that drew worldwide attention. The sub suffered a “catastrophic implosion” roughly halfway through its planned voyage to the Titanic wreck site, according to the US Coast Guard.