Why Matt Damon's $136M Medical Thriller Doesn't Have A Philosophical Sequel Yet Addressed By Director

Steven Soderbergh explains why Contagion doesn’t have a philosophical sequel yet. Directed by Soderbergh, with a script written by Scott Z. Burns, the 2011 medical thriller follows the spread of a highly contagious virus transmitted through respiratory droplets, which turns into a worldwide pandemic, and the development of a vaccine to halt its spread. Its ensemble cast includes Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Bryan Cranston. In December 2020, after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Soderbergh said he and Burns were working on a philosophical sequel to Contagion.

Now, during a recent interview with Variety promoting his new movie Black Bag, Soderbergh explained why the philosophical sequel to Contagion hasn’t happened yet. The director says they simply haven’t found another realistic scenario that feels as frightening and plausible as the original movie. However, he hints that potential themes could include environmental and public health crises, such as the long-term effects of microplastics on our bodies. Read his full response below:

We’ve talked about it. It would have to be about something new, but also something that’s plausible. Part of the reason people were able to find resonance in that movie when it opened, and then 10 years later when the pandemic happened, was it was rooted in reality. We’ve got to find a new gimmick, but it’s got to be something that people go, “Oh, that could happen.”

Maybe. It would need to be something that’s going on right now that just needs a tiny little shove to turn into a huge thing. To me, Contagion was a horror movie. So the trick would be, can you find something as scary that’s real? There’s certainly a case to be made, especially in the West, for the long-term effects, environmentally, of what we eat, what we breathe. As is well known, we have plastic in our blood now. It’s in our brains. This is a new thing that’s got to have a pretty serious effect. There’s lots of possibilities.

What Would It Be About?

Contagion was released in 2011 and was a solid critical and commercial success, though it received renewed popularity in 2020 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The reason why Contagion experienced such a massive resurgence in popularity instead of similar movies like 1995’s Outbreak is because of how accurately it predicted the COVID-19 pandemic. Contagion combined inspiration from real-life outbreaks, such as the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak and the 2009 flu pandemic. For the film, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns consulted with the World Health Organization and medical experts like W. Ian Lipkin and Larry Brilliant.

How Contagion Accurately Predicted The Coronavirus Outbreak

In 2011, Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion was merely a thriller. Now, with the Coronavirus outbreak, it’s turned into something much more prophetic.

In 2020, as Contagion was seeing a resurgence in popularity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, director Steven Soderbergh said he and Burns were working on a “philosophical” sequel. In turn, the sequel wouldn’t serve as a direct continuation of the original story, though it would explore similar themes. During the recent interview, Soderbergh said the sequel could explore the long-term effects of microplastics in our bodies, though there are a lot of other possibilities. While recent documentaries have explored the growing threat of microplastics on human health, it’s not exactly a topic that has been explored frequently in narrative film.

Our Take On Contagion’s Philosophical Sequel

It Has To Be Just As Prescient

The growing threat of microplastics would be an interesting health crisis for Contagion‘s philosophical sequel to explore, especially concerning how microplastics infiltrate ecosystems and create invisible threats. Tangentially, it could also examine how overconsumption and environmental destruction could cause a global health crisis, underscoring humanity’s inability to see the consequences of its actions. However, for the philosophical sequel to be just as good as Contagion, it has to be just as prescient.

Source: Variety