Contagion, a 2011 killer virus flick starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Jude Law has gained newfound popularity as coronavirus rapidly spreads around the world. Fears of coronavirus have prompted movie watchers to go back to the Steven Soderbergh thriller, a fictional account of a pandemic that kills 26 million people worldwide.
According to Warner Bros., the film ranked 270th in views in the company's catalog at the end of 2019, when the existence COVID-19 was not yet public knowledge. Now, it's the second most-watched movie, bested only by the Harry Potter films.
Contagion has been trending on Amazon Prime Video and iTunes as well, with people willing to even pay to watch a 10-year-old movie, reported the New York Times.
The film is about a mysterious disease that kills Paltrow after she travels to Hong Kong for business and follows her back to the US, spreading rapidly. What's remarkable is the similarity in the symptoms and prevention of that virus and COVID-19. The film shows that the virus spread on contact and attacked respiratory systems of the affected.
"It was very deliberately designed to be a cautionary film. We got the science right," producer Michael Shamberg told Buzzfeed News. However, the virus in the film is way more deadly than what coronavirus has proved to be so far.
Though eerily similar to the current viral outbreak, writer Scott Burns told Fortune that the hysteria in the film is the most important thing to pay attention to. "The similarities between our Contagion and the coronavirus are immaterial, accidental and really not that important. What is more important and accurate is the societal response and the spread of fear and the knock-on effects of that. That is proving to be accurate," he said.
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