James Cameron likes 3D. He spent years developing/inventing cameras in order to facilitate his vision for his first film since 1997’s box-office monster Titanic. That follow-up was Avatar and it toppled Titanic as the highest grossing film ever. Leading up to and following the release of Avatar, Cameron was everywhere trumpeting 3D as the most important thing for movies in the history of things. The 3D trend caught on, and now Cameron is back with that other worldwide hit Titanic, now in 3D.The director has been working on converting Titanic to 3D for a while, and the film is poised to be rereleased in theaters April 6th, 2012. The post-conversion process has been painstakingly long, but at the international exhibitor event CineEurope Cameron premiered 15 minutes of a 3D converted Titanic. Hit the jump to see what he had to say.The 15 minutes of footage that Cameron showed to the audience at Amsterdam included the oft-imitated “King of the World!” scene where Leo nearly pushes poor Kate off the tip of the boat due to his ego and fist-pumping. He also showed some footage of the giant engine room. The audience, according to THR, reacted with “whoops, cheers and applause.”Cameron spoke a bit at the exhibition, emphasizing that the rerelease of Titanic wasn’t just about 3D:

"There is a huge audience that has never seen Titanic on the big screen. This is more about Titanic returning to the theaters than just 3D.”

The director created a 4k digital master of the original 35mm print of the film before the conversion process began, so that the rerelease will be the cleanest and highest quality version of the film in every format (2D included).

Cameron appealed to the international exhibitors by crediting them with Titanic’s success:

"When I showed Titanic here (in 1997) it was a terrible time in my life. I was being excoriated in the press. If you remember at the time, it was the '3 hour chick flick where everyone knew the ending.' They were saying 'I don't think so' but the international exhibition community saw something in that reel and they, together with 20th Century Fox, turned Titanic into an international hit."

In closing, Cameron seems eager to hold as many box-office records as possible, as he alluded to breaking even more:

"Titanic broke all the rules and it broke all the records. Let's break all the rules again and let's break all the records again."

Since Cameron is such a proponent of shooting in 3D as opposed to post-converting, it’ll be interesting to see just how good the new version of Titanic looks. With the director’s perfectionist nature and attention to detail, at least it’ll be really, really pretty when we watch Leo drown in that cold, icy water.