The cats over at The Playlist got their hands on the Scott Z. Burns’ script for CONTAGION, which is the deadly-virus-on-the-loose suspense flick that Steven Soderbergh and Warner Bros. are prepping with a cast that includes Matt Damon, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Gwenyth Paltrow and now Laurence Fishburne. While they break it down in detail, I won’t go into all of the specifics here, frankly because I don’t want to know them myself. What I have read, however, makes me pretty intrigued by this globe-spanning, star-studded scarefest. (Well, scary in the “what if this really happened” sense.)
Basically all you need to know about CONTAGION is in this sentence: “If you took the breadth and scope of “Traffic” or “Syriana,” tidied up the writing, and found a subject matter that terrified you relentlessly for two hours, you’d have something close to “Contagion.”
In addition, they say that while it’s “a thriller in tone, and an extremely tense one at that”, it’s not an OUTBREAK redux, as it lacks outlandish action sequences; instead it’s more of a mystery, almost a detective story, as the various characters desperately search for the “index patient,” and a vaccine for the virus. There’s a “race against time” element that provides all the necessary tension.
I’m definitely sold. The film, budgeted at $60 million, will begin shooting soon. If you want to read the whole piece, head on over to The Playlist.
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