"Titanic 2" Is Setting Sail

Just saw this over at /Film, Titanic 2 has just wrapped principle photography.   No, James Cameron hasn't lost his mind, this "sequel" is actually the shady work of schlockmeisters The Asylum (who I recently posted about because of their amazing project Mega Piranha)  Their bread and butter is making "Knockbusters" which are essentially low-budget knock-offs of very successful Hollywood films.  Their catalog includes The Da Vinci Treasure, Transmorphers (and a sequel) Snakes on a Train, Sunday School Musical, (which sounds much cleaner and more wholesome than that smutty Disney version) 2012: Doomsday and Paranormal Entity.  They also released H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes right around the time Hollywood had features in the theatres called War of the Worlds and Sherlock Holmes.  The idea, I assume, is that they can fool some people in the video store with look-alike product - or perhaps lure others out of curiosity.   But how do they get away with "sequelizing" a hit film they don't have the rights to?  Well, in this case, it's a small little work around.  Titanic 2 is not a sequel at all, it's an original film about a ship that is (conveniently) named 'Titanic 2.'   I hope they make a sequel to this movie called Titanic 2 II.

The film, which boasts the dream cast of Brooke Burns (who plays a doctor, but  I suspect will still at some point in the movie turn up in a bikini to help advance the plot) and Bruce Davidson (who must be going through an expensive divorce  to have agreed to do this movie.)  Writer/director Shane Van Dyke (who also acts in the film) gives us a story set on the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic where a company, clearly not very interested in making money, has built a new luxury liner that they've christened Titanic 2.  Amazingly, the maiden  voyage of a new l ship, encounters some difficulties when a tsunami puts a pesky iceberg directly in their path.   I wish I was making any of the above up, but that really is the plot of the plot of the movie.  This piece of shit shot on the RMS Queen Mary, a long since retired ocean liner that was launched in 1936 by the Cunard-White Star Line.   Cunard merged with the White Star Line, the original builders and operators of the ill-fated Titanic, back in 1934, two years before Cunard launched their flagship vessel, the RMS Queen Mary.  The Queen Mary does share some physical similarities with the doomed Titanic, but the fact it now operates as a dry-docked hotel in Long Beach, and has been heavily (and repeatedly) renovated in the years since its last voyage means the production was likely quite limited in terms of how they could make this 75-year old vessel look seaworthy.  It's also interesting to note that the official log line for the film describes the ship as a "new modern luxury liner" that just so happens to look 75 years old.  (Also not giving me confidence in the quality of this film is the fact that the log line also uses the word "ice berg" which, of course, isn't a word at all.)   The RMS Queen Mary has a long history of appearing in movies and TV shows, including the 1979 made-for-TV film S.O.S. Titanic but I suspect Titanic 2 will be it's new low point.   The flick is slated to drop August 24th.