James Cameron hired short actors for “Titanic” – saved 1 million dollars

There is a lot to save on when making the most expensive film in history. Literally cutting costs on actors was not something I expected.

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This year marks the 25th anniversary since “Titanic” was released on home video for the first time, and what better way to celebrate than with a new high-quality edition?

In connection with the new remastered 4K Blu-ray edition with Atmos sound, James Cameron and his business partner Jon Landau spoke to the LA Times about the production. Among other things, they discussed how they saved money on what was then the most expensive film in history.

Landau talks about how they skipped building a complete film set that would lean at three degrees and instead used two others:

• We compromised on the three degrees and saved 750,000 dollars.

But a more ingenious trick saved even more money for them, Cameron explains:

• We only used short extras to make the filming location look bigger. Anyone over 1.73 meters (5 feet 8 inches) couldn’t be part of it. We got an extra value of one million dollars from the cast.

So does size really matter? Now we know.

“Titanic” is available for streaming on Disney+.

ADVERTISEMENT: Buy “Titanic” (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray) at CDON – released today!