Hollywood’s First $1-Billion Epic Masterpiece Debuts on New Streaming Home

In today’s Hollywood landscape, it’s not uncommon for a mega-production to gross $1 billion at the box office. They’re usually franchise movies, animated sequels, and superhero adventures. They can easily be predicted as box-office behemoths years before their release, and though there are a few exceptions, these big-budget juggernauts often lead the box-office wars.

Curiously, the first film ever to pass the $1 billion box office mark wasn’t part of a franchise. It was inspired by a real-life story, and it didn’t need caped heroes, otherworldly creatures, or anything fantastical to captivate audiences. It only needed one of cinema’s most beloved romantic stories – one that’s now available on a new streaming platform.

James Cameron’s Vision for ‘Titanic’ Remains Unmatched

The box office giant we’re referring to is, of course, James Cameron’s 1997 epic masterpiece, Titanic. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, the 195-minute drama tells the story of the tragic sinking of the British ocean liner in 1912. DiCaprio and Winslet play Jack and Rose, two young people from entirely different social classes who meet aboard the ship and fall in love quickly. After the Titanic collides with an iceberg, they both try the impossible to stay together as hundreds of people lose their lives in the icy waters.

Titanic arrived in theaters in December 1997, and quickly surpassed 1993’s Jurassic Park to become the highest-grossing movie of all time. A few months after its release, it officially became the first movie to pass $1 billion, in a record that would cement Cameron’s status as one of Hollywood’s biggest box-office powerhouses. After various re-releases over the years, the official gross now stands at $2.2 billion. Nevertheless, as huge as that number sounds, two of Cameron’s own productions – Avatar (2009) and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) – grossed $2.9 billion and $2.3 billion, respectively.

But Has ‘Titanic’ Actually Aged Well?

29 years after its original release in theaters, Titanic remains an essential watch – a cinematic experience unlike any other that fully displays Cameron’s ambition, but also tells a deeply romantic story that ranks among Hollywood’s finest of its kind. It’s hard not to categorize it as a disaster movie, but it is that central romantic arc that elevates it above other disaster films. The world is literally crumbling around Jack and Rose, but their newfound love elevates their story and fills the viewer with hope.

This is not to say that Titanic isn’t a mesmerizing spectacle, both in its presentation of humanity’s achievement in building the ship and its tragic eventual sinking. The visual effects still look great, and most importantly, they never feel excessive. Cameron leans heavily into mixing practical effects with CGI, and in the end, there are some shots that may fool some of the most dedicated movie-mistake “hunters.” When it comes to the realism that is necessary to make the audience feel part of the movie, some sequences still have the power to leave you breathless.

Overall, Titanic has aged like fine wine — not just any wine, but one that commemorates a time when movies felt grand and risk wasn’t confined to theatrical-release windows, or anything so mundane. Films don’t usually feel like epics anymore because they’re not produced like that. If a movie like Titanic were made today, few (if any) directors would push the boundaries the way Cameron did in the mid-1990s.

Titanic has just been added to Apple TV, as part of the platform’s new experiment in adding non-original titles. The film is now part of the catalog alongside E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Arrival, The Sixth Sense, and The Bourne Identity, among others.