UPDATE: The death on July 5 of Jon Landau has had a great impact on the industry as well as everyone who knew him and/or his work. A veteran studio executive who later teamed with James Cameron to produce and win a Best Picture Oscar for Titanic and then go on to produce Avatar and its sequels, Landau was the real deal, “one of the best to ever do it” as Joe Russo said in his tribute on X Saturday.
I have known Landau and did a few interviews with him over the past several years, even was given a personal tour by the beloved producer himself at Lightstorm’s Manhattan Beach Studios headquarters. I was very pleased to have been able to welcome Jon to our Deadline Studio at PMC in February 2023 for a wide-ranging Behind the Lens interview about his career on the occasion of the restored 3D 4K theatrical rerelease of Titanic. What better way to celebrate Landau than to hear from the man himself.
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What can you say about a guy who has the Produced By credit on three of the four highest-grossing worldwide box office movies of all time? Well you might say his name was James Cameron … or you would also be correct if you said Jon Landau.
Landau has had a hell of a ride rising from 20th Century Fox executive to an Oscar-winning producer with the kind of success few could imagine. Ask anyone who knows him and they will tell you it is no surprise for this hardworking, smart and skilled man who was born into the business. His parents, Ely and Edie Landau, didn’t make movies on the scale of their son, but with producing credits like ’60s classics Long Day’s Journey Into Night and The Pawnbroker (not to mention the innovative American Film Theatre series of theatrical films taken from the Broadway stage), it clearly rubbed off on Jon, who basically grew up around the movies, and that included going to USC.
Landau joins me for this week’s edition of my Deadline video series Behind the Lens, where we talk about his incredible success and particularly Avatar: The Way of Water, which has brought him his third Oscar Best Picture nomination after the original Avatar in 2009 and of course Titanic in 1997 — which Avatar 2 just surpassed on the global box office charts. That may not last too long though since Titanic, the winner of a titanic 11 Oscars, is back in theaters worldwide as of today, just in time for Valentine’s Day and all spruced up with a restored 4K 3D release through Paramount. It follows the remarkable continuing run of Avatar: The Way of Water, still going strong after spending its first two months No. 1 in the charts. (Plus, as we learned this week, Avatar is about to get its own new attraction at Disneyland.)
These are good times for Landau and his partner Cameron, no doubt, and he talks about it all including giving us clues of what is happening with the next three films in the series, why theaters are still so important, what other projects they have brewing including that long-gestating possible reimagining of Fantastic Voyage, and much much more.
To watch our conversation just click on the link above.
Join me every Friday during Oscar season for a new edition of Behind the Lens.