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 stated.
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 govt 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 instructed by then-Fox Filmed Leisure head Peter Chernin, “Don’t name me, take care of 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 stated he had presents from three administrators to collaborate on their subsequent tasks. He determined to go along with Cameron, who needed to make a film code-named “Planet Ice.” That, after all, would become Titanic (1997).
Landau supervised the 100-day building of Fox Baja Studios, the 40-acre oceanfront facility in Rosarito Seashore, Mexico, that housed large film units, the biggest taking pictures tank on this planet and 5 soundstages, one in regards to the measurement of a soccer discipline.
He needed to rewrite the movie’s total manufacturing schedule when it was decided that the primary exterior of their R.M.S. Titanic was going to take two months longer to construct than deliberate. In the meantime, the movie’s authentic $120 million finances had ballooned past $200 million.
“There was loads of stress all through the course of filming and all through postproduction and prerelease,” Landau instructed 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 obtained the brunt of it. It was very tough as a result of I needed 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 exceptional 15 consecutive weeks en path to grossing $1.84 billion worldwide in its preliminary run, simply crusing previous earlier file holder Jurassic Park (1993). Subsequent releases through the years raised its field workplace tally to $2.3 billion. (Learn THR’s authentic overview 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 night time, Landau might need set one other file, for the variety of folks thanked.
Jon Landau and James Cameron celebrated their Oscar greatest image win for ‘Titanic’ backstage on the Shrine Auditorium in 1998.
Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Photos
Avatar (2009) got here with its personal set of imposing obstacles.
Cameron had written a therapy of about 100 pages in 1994, however the visible results expertise to adequately deliver the Na’vi denizens of Pandora to the display (not less than in Cameron’s thoughts) didn’t exist. It will 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 turn out to be the highest-grossing movie of all time (with rereleases, its gross now stands at $2.92 billion). (Right here’s THR’s authentic overview.)
13 years later got here Disney’s Avatar: The Approach of Water (2022), with its intensive results, underwater shoots, pandemic challenges and $2.3 billion gross. The 2 Avatar footage collectively gained 4 Oscars, with Landau and Cameron choosing up two extra greatest image noms.
“If one in all 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 cellphone 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 instructed her about Cameron. “Jim learns from each one in all his experiences. He appears 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 let you know we’re like an previous married couple?’ I don’t need to say good issues in entrance of him — it’ll go to his head — however I really feel like there’s no drawback we are able to’t remedy.”
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 acquired 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 College of Cinematic Arts and after commencement in 1983 returned to New York to work as a set manufacturing assistant, largely directing visitors, on a TV film of the week.
When that was achieved, he was supplied an opportunity to do some submitting work in accounting. “I had little interest in accounting and positively had little interest in submitting, however I stated sure,” he famous. “I learn every part I filed. I don’t know that I used to be presupposed to, however I did. I realized [a lot] in these two weeks.”
He then served as a manufacturing supervisor on Beat Road (1984), a break-dance film, and Key Change (1985), a romantic comedy, and as a manufacturing supervisor on F/X (1986), Manhunter (1986) and Making Mr. Proper (1987).
Landau acquired 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 incredible alternative to see how the trade works from the within out,” he stated.
Landau rose to govt 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 stated 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 school film is made, with a whole bunch and a whole bunch of extras — who aren’t digital.”
Jon Landau and James Cameron at a handprints/footprints ceremony honoring ‘Avatar: The Approach of Water’ in Hollywood in January 2023.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Photos
Titanic was meant to be a one-off job, however Landau would quickly be part of Cameron’s Lightstorm Leisure.
“It was going by way 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 might I’ve who not simply makes nice films, he challenges you each day?”
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 blissful if worldwide there have been 1,000 theaters that might play a film in 3D,” he stated. “I believe we ended up with almost 5,000 screens.”
Later, The Approach of Water would deliver moviegoers again into theaters within the wake of the pandemic. In THR‘s overview, 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 might want.”
“What I, as a lover of movie and a lover of going to the flicks, am most pleased with, is that our movie has illustrated that on this post-pandemic or pandemic period — whichever you need to name it — there nonetheless is that potential to attract folks out of their properties to go to this unimaginable expertise that is known as films,” he instructed 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 warfare documentary Past Glory (2015), and Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel (2019). Additionally they have been always pushing on the Avatar franchise, with the subsequent 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, govt director of the Manhattan arts group Symphony House; and half-brother Les Landau, a director on Star Trek sequence.
One has to marvel how Cameron will go on with out his right-hand man. In spite of everything, “James comes up with the nice desires,” Landau instructed The Jewish Journal in 2010, “and it’s my job to make these desires come true.”
Right here is Cameron’s reply: “You may’t remedy the fragility of life itself. I’m grateful for yearly, each day, 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 superb group 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.”