‘Titanic’ timeline,

-December 1995. Director James Cameron announces he will make

Titanic instead of Terminator 3. -May 16, 1996. Shooting begins in Mexico with a $110 million budget. Despite studio objections, Cameron hires Leonardo Dicaprio over Matthew Mcconaughey. -J-ne 1996. Work begins at Mexico’s Playa de Rosarito to build a 17-million-gallon water tank to hold a model Titanic and emulate the open ocean. The budget balloons to $230 million. -March 1997. Cameron begins editing but is slowed by more than 400

special effects. -May 15, 1997. Despite promises that Titanic will be ready by July 4, Cameron says the date is impossible; 20th Century Fox reschedules the film for Oct. 8. -Oct. 21, 1997. After seeing a rough cut, impressed studio executives

decide to hold the film until Dec. 19 to attract holiday moviegoers. -Dec. 28, 1997. Strong word of mouth, particularly among teen girls, drives business up 24% in Titanic’s second weekend, giving it an easy victory over the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies and Jack Nicholson’s As Good as It Gets, which opens to $12.6 million. -March 6, 1998: In its 12th week of release, Titanic does $17.5 million, remaining the No. 1 movie in America and beating out Tommy Lee Jones’ U.S. Marshals by just $700,000. Still, the film has grossed $449.2 million and is poised to overtake 1977’s Star Wars, which did $461 million, as the highest-grossing film of all time. -March 13, 1998. With another weekend of $17.5 million (along with its 13th-straight perch at No. 1), Titanic’s gross hits $471.4 million, becoming box-office king. -March 23, 1998. Titanic takes the Academy Award for best picture, along with 10 other Oscars, including best original song for James Horner’s My Heart Will Go On, sung by Celine Dion. -Sept. 27, 1998. After 41 weeks, Titanic records its final first-run box office: $3,337 in 26 movie houses. The picture ends with $601 million, a record that would stand until Cameron broke it with 2009’s Avatar, which raked in $761 million.