Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 thriller “Contagion” has resurfaced on the iTunes movie charts amidst the Coronavirus/Covid-19 spreading from China to other countries. The film has popped up on iTunes’s Top Movie List alongside Oscar nominees “Joker,” “Frozen II,” “Parasite,” “Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood” and “Knives Out.” This renewed attention and interest amid the worldwide coronavirus outbreak has also managed to make it the 15th most-rented film on Jan. 29 on iTunes. According to Warner Bros., the film was listed as No. 270 among its catalog titles at the end of December but has now jumped 268 spots to become their second most-watched title of this past month.
Written by Scott Z. Burns, “Contagion” features an ensemble that includes Marion Cotillard, Bryan Cranston, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, and Jennifer Ehle. The film, which reunited Soderbergh with his long-time screenwriting partner Burns, was a thought-provoking and tense medical thriller that explored not only the seriousness of a worldwide epidemic but also the urgent response from the scientific community to find a vaccine. It’s an undeniably frightening movie, especially when seen today, which opens with a woman (Paltrow) on a Hong Kong business trip who has a layover in Chicago before returning home to Minneapolis, catching a mystery virus during her trip, only to have her symptoms fatally worsen and spread.
The fictional pandemic showed in the film (called MEV-1), also started in Asia and is easily transmitted through touch. It’s far more lethal than Covid-19, having killed 26 million people worldwide, but it’s the way Soderbergh and Burns depict the worldwide reaction from scientists, citizens, and politicians alike that makes “Contagion” feel eerily similar to today’s situation. Hell, even “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins admitted to paying $12,99 to watch the movie recently. The acclaimed filmmaker told the NYT, “I paid $12.99 to watch a 10-year-old movie, I’ve never done that before.” Adding, “I was really curious to see how well it would line up to what is happening right now. It was shocking. It felt like I was watching a documentary that has all these movie stars playing real people.”
This absolutely matters. That room was practically all Oscar voters. Fact remains, “Michael” was always going to contend for a best picture nomination, you just had to set your biases aside.