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Contagion's Steven Soderbergh has ideas for a sequel, but he worries it'll be too irresponsible to make it
"We talk about it and have come up with some terrifying ideas," said The Black Bag director. But also, "I don’t want to torture people."
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When Steven Soderbergh's pandemic thriller Contagion dropped in 2011, it seemed like plausible, but highly dramatized, low-level science fiction. Unfortunately, the past few years have taught us that Contagion's lessons should've been better heeded. And now, in a post-COVID-19 world, the director has floated some ideas for a followup... but doubts he'll get around to making them.
The admission comes from an interview Soderbergh did on Sir Richard Dearlove's One Decision podcast, as reported by The Guardian. Apparently, in the time since the first Contagion film dropped, Soderbergh has been in contact with actual experts in pandemics.
"We talk about [Contagion]," said Soderbergh, "and have come up with some terrifying ideas. [...] There would have to be, I think, a plot that doesn’t feel predictable."
As to what that plot might be, however? Soderbergh isn't saying, and at this point, maybe never will. Admitting that he doesn't "want to torture" his viewers, Soderbergh went on to say "There are scenarios that you could come up with that I would categorise as irresponsible. You know, that I would go, 'That’s a big idea, but I’m not sure I want to put that idea out there, frankly.' I do think about that."
Be more cryptic, please, Steven.
Though the conversation of course dealt with some pretty heavy themes, there was one strange bright spot in comparing the movie Contagion to the reality of COVID-19. That is, the speed at which a vaccine was created.
"A couple of years before Covid," Soderbergh says, "New technology allowed us to get to a vaccine in a shockingly short period of time. I mean, the scientific community was aware of what was happening in Wuhan in November and by January, they had a working vaccine. That’s insane how fast that happened and how many lives were saved. This typically when we made Contagion would have been three to four years."
Contagion is available to stream now on Prime Video.
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