Latest news with #Implosion:TheTitanicSubDisaster
Business Wire
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Wire
Thunderbird Entertainment Announces New Senior Vice President, Global Development, for Great Pacific Media
VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Thunderbird Entertainment Group Inc. (TSXV:TBRD, OTC – THBRF) ('Thunderbird' or the 'Company') is pleased to announce Laura Crowson has been hired as Senior Vice President (SVP) of Global Development, for Great Pacific Media ('GPM'), the unscripted arm of the Company. As SVP of Global Development for GPM, Crowson will report to GPM CEO David Way and be a key part of the senior leadership team. Based in Los Angeles, Crowson will identify global market opportunities, drive co-productions and joint ventures, and work closely with GPM development and business teams to create shows that are creatively ambitious and commercially viable. 'With a background in development, high-level casting, business strategy, and pitching, Laura will bring creative leadership to shape existing concepts and spearhead new projects and partnerships,' says Way. 'Her experience with major U.S. networks, and time in the UK, gives her sharp insight into evolving market needs and trends, ensuring GPM remains at the forefront of international content. We are thrilled to welcome her to our team.' Crowson joins GPM from Warner Bros. Discovery, where she served as Vice President of Development and oversaw series and specials for Discovery Channel, Science Channel, Animal Planet, and Max. She played a key role in developing many of the network's successful titles, including Expedition Files, The Last Woodsmen, and Mud Madness, as well as Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, which was Discovery's highest-rated special in over five years. Her portfolio includes work on major global franchises like Deadliest Catch, Naked and Afraid, and Gold Rush. She was also an integral part of WBD's co-production & acquisition strategy, securing more than 500 hours of content and providing creative leadership across a diverse slate. "I'm incredibly excited to join the talented team at GPM and help drive its unscripted strategy forward," says Crowson. "There's so much opportunity to create bold, engaging content that resonates with global audiences, and I look forward to building on GPM's momentum, collaborating with new partners, and bringing fresh, entertaining ideas to life for audiences around the world." For information on GPM, visit For more information on Thunderbird Entertainment Group and to subscribe to the Company's investor list for news updates, go to About GPM Great Pacific Media programs are seen in more than 180 territories, and the Thunderbird company specializes in the financing, development, production and co-production of factual, documentary, and reality television, with a growing slate of scripted projects that include Syfy series Reginald the Vampire and feature films Boot Camp and Sidelined: The QB and Me. Additional productions at Great Pacific Media include the highly rated USA Network Canada series Highway Thru Hell, new series Rocky Mountain Wreckers (The Weather Channel, USA Network Canada) and Timber Titans (USA Network Canada), with new seasons of Deadman's Curse (The History Channel, Hulu) and Wild Rose Vets (produced in association with Wapanatahk Media for APTN, Blue Ant Media) on the way. About Thunderbird Entertainment Group Thunderbird Entertainment Group is a global award-winning, full-service production, distribution and rights management company, headquartered in Vancouver, with additional offices in Los Angeles and Ottawa. Thunderbird creates award-winning scripted, unscripted, and animated programming for the world's leading digital platforms, as well as Canadian and international broadcasters. The Company develops, produces, and distributes animated, factual, and scripted content through its various content arms, including Thunderbird Kids and Family (Atomic Cartoons), Thunderbird Unscripted (Great Pacific Media) and Thunderbird Scripted. Productions under the Thunderbird umbrella include Mermicorno: Starfall, Super Team Canada, Molly of Denali, Kim's Convenience, Highway Thru Hell, Boot Camp and Sidelined: The QB and Me . Thunderbird Distribution and Thunderbird Brands manage global media and consumer products rights, respectively, for the Company and select third parties. Thunderbird is on Facebook, X, and Instagram at @tbirdent. For more information, visit: Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information Certain statements contained in this news release may contain forward-looking information or may be forward-looking statements (collectively, 'forward-looking statements') within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as 'anticipate', 'continue', 'estimate', 'expect', 'forecast', 'may', 'will', 'plan', 'project', 'should', 'believe', 'intend', or similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Crowson's ability to generate new unscripted content, identify global market opportunities and drive co-productions and joint ventures, and GPM's ability to produce new shows that are commercially viable. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic and social uncertainties; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; product capability and acceptance; international risk and currency exchange rates; and technology changes. The forward-looking statements or information contained in this document represent Thunderbird's views as of the date hereof and as such information should not be relied upon as representing Thunderbird's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this document. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Inside the Life of Stockton Rush, the Titan Sub CEO
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of OceanGate who died aboard the Titan submersible along with four others when it imploded in the North Atlantic Ocean in June 2023, was shaped by legacy, ambition, and controversy. A descendant of Founding Fathers and married into a family tied to the Titanic, he founded OceanGate to open access to deep sea tourism. But as Netflix's new documentary, Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, reveals, his resistance to oversight and confidence in his own vision helped set the stage for a fatal outcome. Here's a closer look at Rush's background, from his elite upbringing and engineering career to the decisions that led to the Titan's final dive. Rush was descended from two signers of the Declaration of Independence—Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush—on his father's side, for whom he was named. Wendy Rush, Stockton Rush's wife, is the great-great-granddaughter of Ida and Isidor Straus, first-class passengers who died in the Titanic sinking in 1912. Wendy, born Wendy Hollings Weil, descended from the couple known for their refusal to be separated as the ship went down. The Strauses were later memorialized in James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, and a cenotaph in the Bronx bears a biblical inscription honoring their story. Rush was born on March 31, 1962 in San Francisco. Rush's father chaired Peregrine Oil and Gas in Burlingame, California, a suburb south of the city, and the Natoma Company, which managed real estate investments in the Sacramento area. His grandfather led American President Lines, a major shipping firm, and his grandmother was the namesake of Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco's Civic Center. The family's fortune originated with Ralph K. Davies, who rose from office boy to director at Standard Oil of California. Rush's father also served as president-elect of the Bohemian Club, an exclusive, all-male organization based in San Francisco known for its annual retreat at Bohemian Grove, a 2,700-acre campground about 80 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The secret society's member rolls are notoriously private, but this was lightly referenced in Discovery's Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster documentary and also confirmed in Princeton alumni records. After college, Rush returned to the Bay Area, where he received an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989. Rush earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton in 1984. His father, grandfather, and wife also attended. Their son graduated as recently as 2011. Per the Princeton Alumni Weekly, his namesake, Richard Stockton—Class of 1748 and signer of the Declaration—was one of the school's earliest graduates, and Richard's father donated land to the university. As a student, Rush trained as a pilot and kept a private plane at the Princeton airport. He took off semesters to fly DC-8s in Saudi Arabia during the hajj pilgrimage. According to the Daily Princetonian in 2023, he was arrested during his time in college, including for drunk driving and for possession of a controlled substance. Rush originally dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but that dream was cut short when he couldn't pass the right vision tests. So he switched to engineering, with the goal of being a passenger, and began his career as a flight test engineer at McDonnell Douglas in Seattle. 'I had this epiphany that this was not at all what I wanted to do,' Rush told Smithsonian Magazine in 2019. 'I didn't want to go up into space as a tourist. I wanted to be Captain Kirk on the Enterprise. I wanted to explore.' In the Netflix documentary, it's made clear that Rush wants to be mentioned in the same conversations as the likes of Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin and Elon Musk and SpaceX, so he made deep sea exploration his frontier. He founded OceanGate in 2009. While he held an aerospace engineering degree, he was not a licensed professional engineer—an omission some experts later questioned given his involvement in designing and piloting submersibles. You Might Also Like 12 Weekend Getaway Spas For Every Type of Occasion 13 Beauty Tools to Up Your At-Home Facial Game
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
OceanGate's Titan Submersible Was Almost Featured on 'Expedition Unknown' in 2021
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Josh Gates, host of Discovery Channel's Expedition Unknown, is no stranger to danger. Since its premiere in 2015 on the Travel Channel, Gates has been traversing the planet, exploring remote jungles, ancient ruins, and yes, deep-sea wrecks. Some of the most dangerous places he's ventured include the hazardous waters of Myanmar's Irrawaddy River and surviving fields of landmines in Cambodia. However, one of his most harrowing experiences remained unseen until just weeks ago. In the HBO documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, Gates visited OceanGate's testing facilities in Washington state to take a test dive on the Titan in Puget Sound with the intent of filming a second segment on another dive down to the Titanic wreckage site. But everything went wrong on that visit. As Rush walked Gates through OceanGate's hangar, Gates described him in the present day interview as a 'car salesman,' remarking that he had a rehearsed answer for everything. But that wasn't the case when they were underwater. Even though the submersible didn't even go more than a few feet under Puget Sound, accompanied by a diver equipped with full scuba apparatus, Rush lost control of the submersible's computers, and he struggled to provide any concrete answers to either Gates or his team members, instead just scribbling around on a piece of paper. And for anyone who has watched years and years of Expedition Unknown, viewers saw something they had never seen before: Gates's face looked ashen. 'Stockton seemed completely unaware of how bad this dive had gone from our perspective,' he says. The submersible returned to the surface within a few minutes, but Gates appeared to have made up his mind about the entire venture already. Before the dive, Gates made an offhand comment to Rush about how being sealed into the submersible from the outside was a bit concerning, delivering the line with a nervous laugh that seemed meant to lighten the mood. Rush laughed too and replied, 'Yes, you're my prisoner.' In that moment, during the 2021 recording, Gates glanced toward the camera, his expression uneasy. 'Stockton just didn't see, even psychologically, the need for a way out of this sub,' Gates says. Longtime viewers of Expedition Unknown watching the documentary were likely wondering why they didn't remember this episode or immediately trying to find it online. There's a reason why they didn't remember it: The episode never aired. Gates says he recognized the implications of making a promotional documentary about Rush and OceanGate. 'So I made the really difficult decision to call up the president of the network and to fall on my sword and say, 'I'm really sorry. I know that money's been spent here. I know that this is something that was a big deal for you to sign off on, and I appreciate the opportunity, but we shouldn't do this. This is a mistake, something bad is going to happen here,'' Gates says. On June 18, 2023, the Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, imploded during a dive to the Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic, killing all five aboard, including Rush. The vessel lost communication approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent. After a five-day international search, debris was found about 1,600 feet from the Titanic's bow, confirming the implosion. Investigations revealed that Titan's unconventional carbon-fiber hull had faced prior safety concerns, and the submersible lacked independent certification. The U.S. Coast Guard continues to investigate the incident. You Might Also Like 12 Weekend Getaway Spas For Every Type of Occasion 13 Beauty Tools to Up Your At-Home Facial Game
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
5 Things We Learned from ‘Titan: The OceanGate Disaster'
Stockton Rush, the late CEO of OceanGate who died along with four others when his Titan submersible imploded in June 2023, admired what he called the 'big swingin' dick' energy of fellow businessmen Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. He was obsessed with the Titanic. He had a habit of firing those who disagreed with his judgment. And he pushed forward with his fatal dive after multiple engineers and other experts warned him that his submersible was doomed to fail. These are some of the details laid out in Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, the new Netflix documentary premiering June 11. Titan covers some of the same material as the Discovery documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, including extensive footage of the 2024 U.S. Coast Guard hearing investigating the tragedy. But it has an ace in the hole: David Lochridge, OceanGate's director of marine operations and a submersible pilot, who was fired after challenging Rush's safety standards and later disclosed critical information under the Whistleblower Protection Act. Together with Wired investigative journalist Mark Harris, who was also a consulting producer on Titan, Lochridge provides a barrage of damning factual heft in the new doc. More from Rolling Stone 'Too Much' Trailer: Lena Dunham Directs Semi-Autobiographical Rom-Com Starring Megan Stalter Lady Gaga Praises Queer Music Pioneer Carl Bean in Docu Clip: 'Anthems Unify People' How the Director and Stars of 'Pavements' Brought Many Stephen Malkmuses to Life Here are five things we learned from Titan: Lochridge was shown the door when he insisted that Titan wasn't ready for its big dive to see the wreckage of the Titanic. So was OceanGate director of engineering Tony Niessen. Titan paints a picture of a CEO who surrounded himself with yes men, many of them inexperienced and unqualified. Bonnie Carl, OceanGate's former finance and human resources director, says in the film that at one point Stockton was ready to make her OceanGate's new lead pilot. Her response in the film: 'Are you nuts? I'm an accountant.' Lochridge details Rush's stubborn arrogance in the film: 'He had every contact in the submersible industry telling him not to do this. But once you start down the path of doing it entirely by yourself, and you realize you've taken a wrong turn back at the beginning, then you have to admit that you were wrong.' Nobody interviewed in Titan suggests that Rush was capable of admitting that he was wrong. Niessen is blunt in assessing his experience at OceanGate: 'I worked for somebody who is probably a borderline clinical psychopath. How do you manage a person like that who owns the company?' Emily Hasmmermeister, an OceanGate engineering assistant who Rush saw as a bright young face of the company, left when she realized Titan's carbon-fiber hull was unstable. 'Stockton was so set on getting to the Titanic that nothing that anybody said made much of a difference,' she says in the film. 'I was not going to bolt anyone inside of that sub. And that was something that a lot of my coworkers at the time agreed on. None of them stayed with the company much longer.' Rush comes across as someone who was quick with a 'fuck you,' so it makes sense that he came from what might be called fuck-you money. 'Both Stockton and his wife, Wendy, came from generational wealth,' Harris, the Wired reporter, says in the film. Stockton was a Princeton graduate, even if he didn't have great grades. He traced his ancestry back to two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush. In an ironic twist, Wendy Rush was the great-great granddaughter of two people who died on the Titanic: Isidor and Ida Strauss. Isidor was a co-owner of the Macy's department store. 'Stockton was definitely part of the one percent,' Harris says in the film. If you took a drink every time someone in Titan mentions carbon fiber you'd have a hard time driving home. The material is cheaper than, say, titanium or steel, and it's also less expensive to transport. These factors made it an appealing option for Rush as he built the Titan. The engineers interviewed in the doc also claim it can be highly unstable. A carbon-fiber hull had never been used for as deep a dive as Rush was attempting. In the film, Rob McCallum, who has led many expeditions to the Titanic wreckage as the co-founder of Eyos Expeditions and worked as a consultant for OceanGate, describes carbon fiber as 'essentially string made from carbon. It's coated with resin to hold it together.' He sums up the Titan structure thusly: 'There was no way of knowing when it was going to fail. But it was a mathematical certainty that it would fail.' According to the documentary, Rush refused to have the Titan 'classed,' or certified by a third party to meet industry standards. Lochridge claims that shortly after he insisted on a third-party inspection, and then wrote in a 2018 report that Titan wasn't ready for the 3,800-meter dive to the Titanic wreckage, he was fired. McCallum points out another key Rush workaround: He insisted on classifying his passengers as 'mission specialists.' This categorization was intended to provide legal protection in case something went wrong. 'It was just one of the steps that OceanGate took to make sure that they could work around U.S. legislation,' McCallum says in the film. Rush called them 'Titaniacs.' They're the people who can't get enough of anything related to the Titanic. A few were willing to fork over more than $100,000 for a seat on the Titan. In the film, Rush claims 'there are three words in the English language that are known throughout the planet: Coca-Cola, God, and Titanic.' James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster Titanic surely has something to do with this; it grossed more than $2 billion worldwide, and prompted any number of moviegoers to proclaim themselves king (or queen) of the world. But it's not just the movie that brings people back to RMS Titanic, the British ocean liner which famously sank in 1912, killing approximately 1,500 people. The disaster was due largely to the kind of structural failure that would doom the Titan, a point Titan doesn't fail to make. 'Even now, over 100 years after she sank, she just captures people,' McCallum says in the doc. Something about the combination of massive catastrophe and the dividing lines between social classes aboard the liner — First Class, Second Class, and Steerage, with survival rates declining according to economic position — has proved enthralling. Well before Titanic there was The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a 1960 stage musical (and then a 1964 movie starring Debbie Reynolds) based on the life of Titanic survivor-turned-philanthropist Margaret Brown. Rush was hardly the first gung-ho Titanic enthusiast, though he may have been the most catastrophically arrogant. Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Titan Sub Disaster: Discovery Documentary Shows Wendy Rush Reacting To Fatal ‘Bang'
Newly released video footage captured when OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush's wife reacted in real-time to the Titan submersible's fatal implosion last year. Stockton and his wife both have long, storied family histories in America, which were under speculation before the submarine went viral for killing its five passengers last year. The submarine lacked many of the qualifications, certifications, and even respected design systems that previous deep-water subs all had in their pockets. From the start, even the most vocal in the deep-sea diving industry, like renowned filmmaker James Cameron, were rightfully worried about OceanGate's missions. Stockton's wife, Wendy, the daughter of the couple who founded the Macy's department store, can be seen shockingly aware in the recently released video that something went wrong on the 'Titan's' final, deadly dive. The chilling footage, obtained by the U.S. Coast Guard and featured in the Discovery documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, shows Wendy seated in front of a computer on the 'mother ship,' or launching ship of the submarine above, as the sub descended toward the Titanic's wreckage nearly 4,000 feet below on June 18, 2023. Stockton took on the job, alongside the OceanGate team, of continuing to put tourists on the faulty submarine. One documentary team even went on a short dive with the Titan and Stockton before the host of Expedition Unknown, Josh Gates, had to call his channel's executive and beg that the media team be pulled from such a liability of an assignment. In lamens terms, the submarine was already cracked in the main hull and showed signs of its weakness to even the most untrained eyes – like TV hosts. According to the newly released footage, Wendy can be seen suddenly reacting to a loud sound: the very moment the sub's carbon-fiber hull catastrophically failed, killing all five people aboard instantly. In response, she can be seen calmly asking two other OceanGate staff in the video, 'What was that bang?' At the time, the Titan was at a depth of about 3,300 meters, where the immense underwater pressure left no survivors and almost immediately killed all aboard, as confirmed by The victims included Stockton Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, and British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood with his 19-year-old son, Suleman. Suleman, at his age and lack of deep diving experience, had no reason to be on the submarine, but Stockton had decided that it was fine even in the unregulated vessel. The submarine was manned by modified PlayStation controllers, something Stockton previously bragged to the media about, per CBS News. While the tragedy officially began with the implosion, the Coast Guard's investigation revealed a dangerous flaw—delamination (a breakdown of the main hull's carbon fiber)—had been detected as early as 2022. Despite repeated warnings from engineers and fellow deep-sea explorers, OceanGate pressed forward with risky expeditions, pushing their unconventional carbon-fiber design that had never been properly certified. As seen in the documentary, the carbon fiber design had failed on previous dives, emitting loud bangs to all onboard. This forced Stockton and OceanGate to completely redesign a similar submarine, which also failed. The carbon fiber wasn't the only weird engineering choice. OceanGate also chose to build a submarine that, in the most simple of ways, mismatched previous submarine designs that successfully reached those dangerous depths. Instead of the widely accepted, in terms of modern deep-sea diving experts, a teardrop-shaped vessel that barely holds one or two passengers, Stockton demanded that his design resemble the stereotypical 'log in the water' design to carry more passengers. More unregulated passengers in an unregulated submarine started to raise concerns among many industry experts before its final tragic implosion. James Cameron's deep-sea submarine, which reached the deepest depths of the ocean floor, was shaped like that raindrop design. His successful dives can be seen in his 2014 film DeepSea Challenge. Cameron has publicly told many media outlets that Stockton and OceanGate were a red flag even before the tragic accident. After the disaster, OceanGate ceased operations and pledged cooperation with the United States Coast Guard investigation. Some engineers and 'dive experts' are now testifying to the Coast Guard about how they understood that Stockton was losing his mind and that the submarine was destined to fail. Some employees claimed to the documentary team that Stockton fired them when voicing concerns or that they were anxious about voicing concerns about retaining their jobs at OceanGate.
