A closer look
Twentieth Century Fox was so absolutely terrified by the spiraling, out-of-control budget for James Cameron's Titanic that they aggressively begged Paramount Pictures to split the $200 million cost, essentially sharing what they assumed would be the biggest box office bomb in cinematic history. Cameron had notoriously gone wildly over schedule, building a nearly full-scale replica of the doomed ship and submerging his frozen crew in millions of gallons of water while executives actively panicked and prayed for a write-off. When the film unexpectedly grossed over two billion dollars and won a boatload of Oscars, Paramount executives got to laugh all the way to the bank with half the profits from a movie they barely lifted a finger to produce. It remains one of the most spectacular failures of corporate risk assessment ever documented, proving that the smartest guys in the room usually have absolutely no idea what teenagers will pay to see a fictional romance on a sinking boat
