Warner Brothers Pictures film “Contagion” will premiere at Venice film festival on September 3 and US opening September 9. Director Steven Soderbergh and producers Stacey Sher and Michael Shamberg pulled together a remarkable cast to tell the first pandemic movie tale that is based on real science. The film is officially described as, “An action-thriller centered on the threat posed by a deadly disease and an international team of doctors contracted by the CDC to deal with the outbreak.”
Steven Soderbergh
Laurie Garrett served as a consultant on the film, working with extraordinary screenplay writer Scott Z. Burns for more than two years. Also serving as scientific consultants were Garrett’s friends, Dr. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, and Dr. Larry Brilliant of the Skoll Global Threats Foundation in San Francisco. The goal was to create a great, riveting movie that shunned all the typical Hollywood epidemic canards: No zombies; No cures for thousands of people from the blood of a single monkey; No outer space visitations spreading extraterrestrial diseases; and no evil scientists cooking up horrors in their basements.
Matt Damon plays Thomas Emhoff; Gwyneth Paltrow portrays his wife, Beth. Kate Winslet is cast as CDC scientist Dr. Erin Mears, while on the other side of the world a WHO investigator is portrayed by Marion Cotillard. Playing Mears’ CDC boss, Dr. Ellis Cheever, is Laurence Fishburne. Jude Law plays blogger Alan Krumwiede.