James Cameron denies ‘offensive’ links to Titanic implosion sub movie

James Cameron has denied “offensive rumours” that linked him to a film about the fatal implosion of the OceanGate Titanic submersible that killed five people aboard.

The famed Hollywood director, who helmed the Oscar-winning Titanic movie in 1997, strongly denied any involvement with a movie on the disaster which gripped people around the world.

“I don’t respond to offensive rumours in the media usually, but I need to now,” he tweeted on Saturday. “I’m NOT in talks about an OceanGate film, nor will I ever be.”

Cameron, 68, has visited the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic 33 times and has been outspoken about the loss of the OceanGate sub.

It lost contact with its mother ship an hour and 45 minutes into its two-hour descent to the ocean floor, sparking a massive search and rescue operation.

After four days of searching, the US Coast Guard revealed that a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) had located pieces of debris from the Titan on the seabed 1,600ft (about 500m) from the bow of the Titanic wreck.

British adventurer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood were killed on board the deep-sea vessel, alongside OceanGate Expeditions CEO chief Stockton Rush and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

Cameron has previously likened the tragic fate of the Titan to the ocean liner its crew were trying to reach.

“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night,” Cameron told ABC News.

About 1,500 people were killed when the Titanic sank in April 1912. The site of the wreck remained a mystery until 1985, when explorer Robert Ballard located its remains about 640kms off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, at a depth of 4,000m.

Cameron later revealed that he had known sensitive information about the fate of the Titan sub for days before its remains were found.

The director said that he was aware that top secret US Navy listening devices had detected an implosion near the Titanic wreckage within an hour of it occurring on Monday, and has since described the search for the five crew members as a “nightmarish charade”.

He has also claimed that the Titan crew would have known that the submersible’s hull had started to crack and were trying to resurface when the “catastrophic implosion” occurred.

The 68-year-old told ABC News that his contacts within “the community” had shared details of the mission with him, a reference to the small and close-knit submersible Manned Underwater Vehicle (MUV) industry.