There was a time when James Cameron's career looked as though it might join the Titanic, down in the depths. Before he became king of the modern blockbuster with “Titanic” and “Avatar,” Cameron teetered on an abyss as his romance set aboard the doomed ocean liner ran into production delays, cost overruns and smug talk in Hollywood that the director was out of control with his $200 million shipwreck. Fifteen years, 11 Academy Awards and $1.84 billion at the worldwide box office later, Cameron is relaunching “Titanic” in a 3-D version whose new earnings will close the gap on the film that eventually surpassed it as contemporary Hollywood's top-grossing flick. That would be Cameron's sci-fi epic “Avatar,” with $2.8 billion. Fresh from his record-setting seven-mile (11-kilometer) solo ocean dive in the Marianas Trench, done while on break from writing his two “Avatar” sequels, Cameron continues to ride a wave of success no one foresaw amid the gloomy predictions of 1997, when “Titanic” was bumped from summer to Christmas release because of production problems.
