Contagion: Soderbergh developing philosophical sequel to pandemic thriller

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Director Steven Soderbergh's pandemic thriller Contagion (watch it HERE) was released in 2011 to solid box office and positive critical response, and nine years later it started getting renewed attention as people decided to revisit it, or watch it for the first time, during our real life pandemic. Contagion has been talked about so much in the last ten months, it makes sense that Soderbergh is now contemplating a sequel.

During an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Soderbergh revealed, 

I’ve got a project in development that (Contagion writer) Scott Burns is working with me on, that’s a kind of philosophical sequel to Contagion, but in a different context. You’ll kind of look at the two of them as kind of paired, but very different hair colors. So, Scott and I had been talking about, ‘So, what’s the next iteration of a Contagion-type story?’ We have been working on that; we should probably hot-foot it a little bit."

It will be interesting to see what exactly Soderbergh and Burns have in mind for this "philosophical sequel".

The original film follows 

the rapid progress of a lethal airborne virus that kills within days. As the fast-moving epidemic grows, the worldwide medical community races to find a cure and control the panic that spreads faster than the virus itself. At the same time, ordinary people struggle to survive in a society coming apart.

Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, Jennifer Ehle, Elliott Gould, and Sanaa Lathan star.

I haven't watched Contagion since 2011, but I thought it was a great film at the time. If Soderbergh and Burns want to make something else along similar lines, I'm all for it.

This isn't the first time we've heard talk of a Contagion sequel; Warner Bros. was looking to hire a screenwriter for Contagion 2 in 2012, but apparently the project didn't get very far back then.