‘Titanic,’ ‘Avatar’ Producer for James Cameron Was 63

Jon Landau, the Oscar-winning producer who made the desires of James Cameron come to life by overcoming excessive logistical challenges to deliver the filmmaker’s Titanic and Avatar blockbusters to the massive display, has died. He was 63.

Landau’s son Jamie Landau confirmed his demise to The Hollywood Reporter. He died Friday in Los Angeles after 16-month battle with most cancers, a Disney spokesperson mentioned.

A son of producers — his father was an Oscar nominee — the passionate Landau produced movies together with Honey, I Shrunk the Children (1989) and Dick Tracy (1990) earlier than spending some 5 years as an government at Fox, the place he oversaw manufacturing on Die Onerous 2 (1990), The Final of the Mohicans (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) and Cameron’s True Lies (1994).

If Cameron had an issue on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s True Lies, he was advised by then-Fox Filmed Leisure head Peter Chernin, “Don’t name me, cope with Jon,” Landau recalled in a 2011 interview. He spent 4 months on location within the Florida Keys with the director.

When Landau determined to depart Fox to return to producing, he mentioned he had provides from three administrators to collaborate on their subsequent initiatives. He determined to go along with Cameron, who wished to make a film code-named “Planet Ice.” That, after all, would grow to be Titanic (1997).

Landau supervised the 100-day development of Fox Baja Studios, the 40-acre oceanfront facility in Rosarito Seashore, Mexico, that housed enormous film units, the most important capturing tank on this planet and 5 soundstages, one concerning the measurement of a soccer area.

He needed to rewrite the movie’s total manufacturing schedule when it was decided that the principle exterior of their R.M.S. Titanic was going to take two months longer to construct than deliberate. In the meantime, the movie’s unique $120 million finances had ballooned past $200 million.

“There was plenty of strain all through the course of filming and all through postproduction and prerelease,” Landau advised the Los Angeles Occasions in 1998.

Fox, which was financing the movie with Paramount, “was very robust however rightfully so. And I used to be the man who I consider bought the brunt of it. It was very tough as a result of I wished to please all three masters: the studio, the director and the film. And it was my job to steadiness that … to not lose sight of that.”

All of it labored out when Titanic, which opened on Dec. 19, 1997, nabbed the highest spot on the field workplace for a outstanding 15 consecutive weeks en path to grossing $1.84 billion worldwide in its preliminary run, simply crusing previous earlier report holder Jurassic Park (1993). Subsequent releases through the years raised its field workplace tally to $2.3 billion. (Learn THR’s unique evaluate right here.)

The love story/catastrophe epic additionally collected a record-tying 11 Academy Awards — Landau and Cameron shared one of the best image prize — off one other record-tying 14 nominations. On the podium on the Shrine Auditorium on Oscar evening, Landau may need set one other report, for the variety of folks thanked.

Avatar (2009) got here with its personal set of imposing obstacles.

Cameron had written a remedy of about 100 pages in 1994, however the visible results know-how to adequately deliver the Na’vi denizens of Pandora to the display (at the least in Cameron’s thoughts) didn’t exist. It could take the filmmaker, New Zealand’s Weta Digital and others years to get to that, and principal pictures wouldn’t start till 2007.

With an official finances of $237 million — some estimates put it past $300 million — Fox’s Avatar, made in 3D, premiered in London on Dec. 10, 2009. With its preliminary run of $2.7 billion, it bested Titanic to develop into the highest-grossing movie of all time (with rereleases, its gross now stands at $2.92 billion). (Right here’s THR’s unique evaluate.)

13 years later got here Disney’s Avatar: The Means of Water (2022), with its intensive results, underwater shoots, pandemic challenges and $2.3 billion gross. The 2 Avatar photos collectively gained 4 Oscars, with Landau and Cameron choosing up two extra finest image noms.

“If certainly one of Cameron’s superpowers is the depth of his focus, that focus is partly made attainable as a result of Landau is someplace close by, with one Airpod protruding of his ear, concurrently having a telephone dialog with Burbank about one deadline and an in-person dialog with a crewmember in Wellington [the New Zealand home of Weta] about one other,” Rebecca Keegan wrote for a THR cowl story in 2022.

“I’ve seen an evolution of him,” Landau advised her about Cameron. “Jim learns from each certainly one of his experiences. He appears to be like again and goes, ‘That is what labored, that is what didn’t work, how do I make it higher?’”

As Landau was in the midst of this sentence, Keegan wrote, “There was a tough knock on his workplace door, and Cameron pops in, Kramer-style. ‘Did he inform you we’re like an previous married couple?’ I don’t wish to say good issues in entrance of him — it’ll go to his head — however I really feel like there’s no drawback we will’t resolve.”

Landau was born in New York on July 23, 1960. His mother and father, Ely A. Landau and Edie Landau, owned Manhattan film homes, based the American Movie Theater and produced greater than a dozen movies, together with Lengthy Day’s Journey Into Night time (1962), The Pawnbroker (1965), The Iceman Cometh (1973) and The Chosen (1981).

(In 1971, Ely obtained an Oscar nom for the documentary King: A Filmed File … Montgomery to Memphis. After his demise in 1993, Edie had a protracted relationship with actor Martin E. Brooks.)

Landau performed soccer at his Bronx highschool earlier than he and his household moved to L.A.’s Brentwood neighborhood in his junior yr. He helped out on The Chosen whereas attending the USC Faculty of Cinematic Arts and after commencement in 1983 returned to New York to work as a set manufacturing assistant, largely directing site visitors, on a TV film of the week.

When that was completed, he was provided an opportunity to do some submitting work in accounting. “I had little interest in accounting and positively had little interest in submitting, however I mentioned sure,” he famous. “I learn all the things I filed. I don’t know that I used to be speculated to, however I did. I realized [a lot] in these two weeks.”

He then served as a manufacturing supervisor on Beat Avenue (1984), a break-dance film, and Key Trade (1985), a romantic comedy, and as a manufacturing supervisor on F/X (1986), Manhunter (1986) and Making Mr. Proper (1987).

Landau obtained his first producer credit score on Paramount’s Campus Man (1987), then co-produced two Disney movies, Joe Johnston’s Honey I Shrunk the Children and Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy.

At simply 28 in 1989, he was employed to supervise bodily manufacturing at Fox. “I actually checked out this as an excellent alternative to see how the business works from the within out,” he mentioned.

Landau rose to government vp on the studio as he additionally supervised Residence Alone (1990), Aliens 3 (1992), Mighty Morphin Energy Rangers: The Film (1995) and the Cameron-produced Unusual Days (1995).

When Cameron shared an early draft of Titanic with him, Landau mentioned he “fell in love with it. It was not simply the script however the concept that this could possibly be the final time that an epic, old style film is made, with lots of and lots of of extras — who aren’t digital.”

Titanic was meant to be a one-off job, however Landau would quickly be a part of Cameron’s Lightstorm Leisure.

“It was going by means of that have with Jim, the place we constructed up a higher mutual respect and a mutual bond with one another, [when he said], ‘Wait, reasonably than you going off and doing your individual factor, why don’t you come into the Lightstorm fold?’ Be part of it, and we’ll do issues collectively. … What higher filmmaker may I’ve who not simply makes nice motion pictures, he challenges you daily?”

An excellent salesman, the gregarious Landau traveled all over the world to pitch the potential of Avatar in 3D to exhibitors. “Once we began out, we might have been completely satisfied if worldwide there have been 1,000 theaters that might play a film in 3D,” he mentioned. “I feel we ended up with almost 5,000 screens.”

Later, The Means of Water would deliver moviegoers again into theaters within the wake of the pandemic. In THR‘s evaluate, David Rooney wrote, “the expanded, bio-diverse world-building pulls you in, the visible spectacle retains you mesmerized, the eagerness for environmental consciousness is stirring, and the warfare is as visceral and thrilling as any multiplex viewers may want.”

“What I, as a lover of movie and a lover of going to the films, am most pleased with, is that our movie has illustrated that on this post-pandemic or pandemic period — whichever you wish to name it — there nonetheless is that potential to attract folks out of their properties to go to this unimaginable expertise that known as motion pictures,” he advised THR’s Mia Galuppo.

“And I don’t consider there’s the rest prefer it on this planet. As producers, as administrators, as studios, as exhibitors, we’ve a accountability to proceed to protect that have for generations to come back.”

At Lightstorm, he and Cameron additionally produced Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris (2002), the conflict documentary Past Glory (2015), and Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel (2019). Additionally they had been consistently pushing on the Avatar franchise, with the following sequels deliberate for 2025, 2029 and 2031.

Along with Jamie, survivors embrace his spouse of almost 40 years, Julie, who as soon as labored as a movie accountant; one other son, Jodie, a vocalist, composer and percussionist; his sisters, Tina Landau, a theater director, and Kathy Landau, government director of the Manhattan arts group Symphony House; and half-brother Les Landau, a director on Star Trek collection.

One has to marvel how Cameron will go on with out his right-hand man. In any case, “James comes up with the nice desires,” Landau advised The Jewish Journal in 2010, “and it’s my job to make these desires come true.”

Right here is Cameron’s reply: “You’ll be able to’t resolve the fragility of life itself.  I’m grateful for yearly, daily, each minute we had collectively. I’m grateful for the assumption he had in me and what his partnership allowed us to perform collectively. Part of myself has been torn away. However the wonderful workforce he assembled and led nonetheless stays, and we’ll dedicate ourselves to fulfilling Jon’s legacy.  Not simply the movies but to come back, however the love and connection that binds the Avatar and Lightstorm household collectively.”