Titanic Director James Cameron Reveals He Wanted 'Jurassic Park', But Steven Spielberg Beat Him To It

James Cameron: The One That Got Away... To Spielberg

For everyone in the world, there's one that got away - even for uber-director James Cameron.

The filmmaker with the world's two highest-grossing films under his belt revealed to HuffPost UK that he had always wanted to make film Jurassic Park, but was beaten to it by Jaws director Steven Spielberg.

James Cameron had to content himself with making the highest-grossing film of all time

"I tried to buy the book rights and he beat me to it by a few hours," Cameron revealed at the recently-opened Titanic Museum in Belfast, where the ship he brought to the big screen was designed and crafted back at the beginning of last century.

"But when I saw the film, I realised that I was not the right person to make the film, he was. Because he made a dinosaur movie for kids, and mine would have been aliens with dinosaurs, and that wouldn't have been fair.

"Dinosaurs are for 8-year-olds. We can all enjoy it, too, but kids get dinosaurs and they should not have been excluded for that. His sensibility was right for that film, I'd have gone further, nastier, much nastier."

James Cameron donated items from his Titanic film, including the ship's wheel, to the Belfast Museum

It was the first time James Cameron had visited Belfast, and he described previously being moved by the efforts of the Irish engineers, when he commissioned a US Navy report into the sinking of the Titanic, following his original success with the film.

Check back here on Saturday for our in-depth interview with James Cameron:

  • The future of film-making: "I think we'll be watching 98% of our films in 3D"
  • Technical versus artistic directing: "There's a sense you can't be both... bulls**t!"
  • The challenges of Avatar sequels: "I want to create a crescendo"
  • Diving to the Titanic wreck again: "I won't go back"

"We found we couldn't replicate the sinking of the ship, without it rolling either one way or the other, and concluded that it must have been human intervention that led it to sinking straight downwards. That was the engineers on the ship, who sacrificed their lives, moving water around to stop it listing, which meant the lifeboats could be lowered, so they saved hundreds of lives."

Jack and Rose have a sweet but doomed romance in Titanic

The city's association with the doomed vessel is being celebrated in a museum dedicated to the building of the ship, and all aspects of Belfast life at that time of the beginning of last century.

The museum stands on Queen's Island in Belfast Harbour, next to where the Titanic was launched from its first ever slipway. The attention to detail is impressive - the building's walls stand 92 feet high, the same height as the Titanic, and contains exactly the same cubic capacity as the original ship. Helping to bring the story to life for visitors is a reconstructed gantry showing the depth of the ship's hull, and a glass-bottomed floor through which spectators can glimpse the wreck for themselves.

Titanic is now available on Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray 3D, including two extra documentaries exploring the history of Titanic and the making of the film. Some pictures below, plus the director's trip to the Belfast Titanic Museum...

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