Hollywood Boulevard saw one Titanic star after another on Monday night.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Billy Zane reunited at the red carpet premiere of the former’s upcoming movie One Battle After Another at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, 28 years after they played rivals in James Cameron’s 1997 epic disaster-romance.
Zane commemorated the duo’s reunion on Instagram, praising his former costar’s talents as well as the vision of One Battle filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson.
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“Back on the block,” the Phantom star wrote. “Always great to see my pal and his fine craft. @leonardodicaprio only gets better. Fantastic work by the entire cast under the always deft writing and direction of @paulthomasanderson.”
In Titanic, Zane portrayed Cal Hockley, the condescending steel magnate engaged to Kate Winslet’s Rose DeWitt Bukater. He comes to blows with DiCaprio’s working-class orphan Jack Dawson as they vie for Rose’s affection on the doomed ocean liner.
Zane also promoted his upcoming Marlon Brando biopic Waltzing with Brando in his post, noting that the film will premiere at the same theater as One Battle After Another next week.
“I’d like to thank all the fans and media who have made this fun and refreshingly charming indie film about #marlonbrando as the O.G. champion of pressing causes between iconic film roles, resonate with their curiosity, profound support and genuine love,” the actor wrote. “You can’t buy that and It’s not lost on us. Thank you!”
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Waltzing with Brando follows the On the Waterfront star during a five-year period between 1969 and 1974, as he experienced a career renaissance with projects like The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris. Zane explained why he was attracted to the film’s more focused approach to telling Brando’s story during an interview with Entertainment Weekly last year.
“I’m not interested in making a tabloid, sensationalist checklist of all the speed bumps in [Marlon’s] life, the highs and lows because I don’t like the structure of biopics,” he said. “You can never cover a life objectively when you’re just trying to hit all the marks; it feels false and saccharine, and ultimately I don’t end up liking the subject at the end of a biopic…. I wanted to celebrate the man for being a forward-thinker, perhaps surrounded by broods who didn’t really understand it or get it.”
One Battle After Another has received resounding praise following its first wave of screenings. Steven Spielberg said the film was “really incredible” while moderating an interview with Anderson on Sunday at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles — and compared it to a legendary satire. “I have not seen a movie that is so tonally a relative to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove,” Spielberg opined (via The Film Stage). “This brings a kind of absurdist comedy, taken very seriously, because it’s so much a reflection of what’s happening today, every day, throughout this country.”
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The film, in which DiCaprio plays an ex-revolutionary on a mission to rescue his daughter, was also lauded by Knives Out filmmaker Rian Johnson, who said that no praise for the movie could be too extreme.
“I don’t think One Battle After Another can be over-hyped,” he wrote on Bluesky. “You’re going to hear alot of what sounds like awards season hyperbole about it, but it’s not – the movie is undeniable, it really is that good. And it’s a big funny entertaining action movie, but also much more. I can’t wait to see it again.”
