A new Netflix documentary about the Oceangate disaster, in which five people died on a submersible tour to the wreck of the Titanic, has released its first trailer.
Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, directed by Mark Monroe (Gone Girl, Britney v Spears), will debut at the Tribeca Film Festival and be available to stream on Netflix from 11 June.
A teaser for the film, captioned “The deeper you look, the darker it gets”, promises to examine the true events that led to the doomed expedition.
“There was no way of knowing when the Titan was going to fail, but it was a mathematical certainty that it would fail,” says one expert in the clip released on Thursday (22 May).
“Stockton [Rush, the founder of Oceangate] fully believed that it would work. He wanted fame. To fuel his ego, fame,” suggests another.
“I thought Stockton was a borderline psychopath,” adds a third.
On 23 June 2023, the underwater craft lost contact with the outside world an hour and 45 minutes into its dive beneath the waters.
Offering commercial trips to the most famous shipwreck in history, the company behind the Titan, OceanGate, charged $250,000 a trip in the “Titanic tourist sub”.
After an extensive search and rescue mission, watched with bated breath around the world, before the sub’s estimated 96 hours of emergency oxygen supply ran out.
The rescue operation – which at one point offered a glimmer of hope when intermittent banging noises were heard on a sonar – ultimately ended in tragedy when the remains of the underwater craft were discovered with experts determining that the vessel had imploded.
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A synopsis for the film reads: “Titan: The Oceangate Disaster delves into the psyche of billionaire OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and explores his relentless quest to bring oceanic exploration to the masses — at any cost.
“Through exclusive access to whistleblower testimony, pivotal audio recordings, and footage from the company’s early days, the film provides an unprecedented look at the technical challenges, moral dilemmas, and shockingly poor decisions that culminated in the catastrophic expedition. Titan examines the doomed underwater endeavour that forced the world to reconsider the price of unchecked ambition in the depths of the ocean.”
Director Monroe told Netflix’s Tudum: “When the Titan submersible went missing, I was horrified and mesmerized by the 24/7 news coverage and global social commentary — just like the rest of the world.
“There was no context for what could have happened to those onboard, and the only touchpoint was the Titanic, a story that’s now become a grim fairy tale. The more I dug into this terrible tragedy, the more intrigued I became about how this could have ever happened in the first place, and who exactly was the man who built and then went down with this ship. We hope that this film can help provide answers to these very questions.”
