Jon Landau, the Oscar-winning producer who made the goals of James Cameron come to life by overcoming excessive logistical challenges to deliver the filmmaker’s Titanic and Avatar blockbusters to the large display screen, has died. He was 63.
Landau’s son Jamie Landau confirmed his demise to The Hollywood Reporter. He died Friday in Los Angeles, and no trigger was revealed.
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 Laborious 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, 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 stated he had provides from three administrators to collaborate on their subsequent tasks. He determined to go together with Cameron, who wished to make a film code-named “Planet Ice.” That, in fact, would grow to be Titanic (1997).
Landau supervised the 100-day building of Fox Baja Studios, the 40-acre oceanfront facility in Rosarito Seaside, Mexico, that housed large film units, the biggest capturing tank on this planet and 5 soundstages, one concerning the dimension of a soccer subject.
He needed to rewrite the movie’s whole 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 price range had ballooned past $200 million.
“There was plenty of strain 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 troublesome 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 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 evaluate right here.)
The love story/catastrophe epic additionally collected a record-tying 11 Academy Awards — Landau and Cameron shared the most effective 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 finest image win for ‘Titanic’ backstage on the Shrine Auditorium in 1998.
Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Photographs
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 screen (at the very 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 price range 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 evaluate.)
13 years later got here Disney’s Avatar: The Method 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 selecting 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 instructed her about Cameron. “Jim learns from each certainly one of his experiences. He seems 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 clear up.”
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 Report … 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 12 months. 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 visitors, on a TV film of the week.
When that was carried out, 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 little thing I filed. I don’t know that I used to be purported 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 Change (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 trade works from the within out,” he stated.
Landau rose to government vp on the studio as he additionally supervised House 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 this may very well be the final time that an epic, old school film is made, with lots of and lots of of extras — who aren’t digital.”
Jon Landau and James Cameron at a handprints/footprints ceremony honoring ‘Avatar: The Method of Water’ in Hollywood in January 2023.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Photographs
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 larger mutual respect and a mutual bond with one another, [when he said], ‘Wait, relatively than you going off and doing your personal 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 films, he challenges you on daily basis?”
A terrific salesman, the gregarious Landau traveled world wide to pitch the potential of Avatar in 3D to exhibitors. “Once we began out, we might have been comfortable if worldwide there have been 1,000 theaters that would play a film in 3D,” he stated. “I believe we ended up with practically 5,000 screens.”
Later, The Method 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 fervour for environmental consciousness is stirring, and the warfare is as visceral and thrilling as any multiplex viewers may need.”
“What I, as a lover of movie and a lover of going to the flicks, am most happy 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 films,” he instructed THR’s Mia Galuppo.
“And I don’t consider there’s anything prefer it on this planet. As producers, as administrators, as studios, as exhibitors, we’ve a duty to proceed to protect that have for generations to come back.”
At Lightstorm, he and Cameron additionally produced Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris (2002), the battle documentary Past Glory (2015), and Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel (2019). Additionally they had been consistently pushing on the Avatar franchise, with the subsequent sequels deliberate for 2025, 2029 and 2031.
Along with Jamie, survivors embrace his spouse of practically 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 Area; and half-brother Les Landau, a director on Star Trek collection.
One has to surprise how Cameron will go on with out his right-hand man. In any case, “James comes up with the nice goals,” Landau instructed The Jewish Journal in 2010, “and it’s my job to make these goals come true.”