Biomedical scientists are slated to hit the silver screen again. In September, Warner Bros will release Contagion, an action-thriller that “follows the rapid progress of a lethal airborne virus that kills within days.” According to the official website, the film features a number of US government scientists and doctors who try to contain the outbreak, and, unsurprisingly, how “ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart.”
WB released the film’s trailer yesterday, which you can watch here.
Beside the star-studded cast — which includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet and Jude Law — the preview features many hallmarks of epidemic films, including a chained monkey in a cage, a mention of the virus mutating, and even a conspiracy theory — “the truth is being kept from the world,” croons a voiceover.
The trailer reveals that the virus in Contagion derives from the deadly bird flu, which reemerged briefly in Hong Kong last winter. In 2006, scientists reported mutations in the virus that could enable it to spread quickly among people. But, as we reported at the time, the media-fueled panic was perceived by many scientists as overblown. And indeed, five years on, only 302 people have died from the virus.
But who needs data, epidemiology and molecular biology for a Hollywood thriller?
“On day one there were two people, and then four, and then sixteen,” says journalist Alan Krumwiede, played in the film by Law. “In three months, it’s a billion — that’s where we’re heading.”
Fishburne’s character, fictional US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Ellis Cheever, warns that the virus’s lethality is a natural mutation: “Someone doesn’t have to weaponize the bird flu. The birds are doing that.”
This Nature Medicine blogger is a sucker for the medical thriller genre. But even so, I can’t help but wonder: Hasn’t this film been made before? Maybe… in 1995? Starring Dustin Hoffman?
I’m not alone in this ephiphany. ScreenRant blogger Mike Eisenberg also noted the similarity between Steven Sodenberg’s new film and Outbreak, a classic among epidemic thrillers. Not only do Morgan Freeman (Outbreak) and Laurence Fishburne (Contagion) both sport moustaches, but the trailers of the movies are pretty similar. Eisenberg’s trailer mash-up, with Contagion’s voiceover atop Outbreak’s film, can be watched below:
Despite the teasing, you can bet where I’ll be on 9 September when the film opens: biting my nails in the theater, but not before washing my hands. After all, as the trailer reminds us, transmission only takes one touch.