Contagion (DVD)

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Contagion (DVD)
Recording Studio: Warner Home Video

Contagion is a 2011 American medical thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh. Its ensemble cast includes Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Elliott Gould, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, Jennifer Ehle, Sanaa Lathan, and Marion Cotillard. The plot concerns the spread of a highly contagious virus transmitted by respiratory droplets and fomites, attempts by medical researchers and public health officials to identify and contain the disease, the loss of social order as the virus turns into a worldwide pandemic, and the introduction of a vaccine to halt its spread. To follow several interacting plot lines, the film makes use of the multi-narrative hyperlink cinema style, popularized in several of Soderbergh s films.

Following their collaboration on The Informant! (2009), Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns discussed a film depicting the rapid spread of a virus. Burns consulted with representatives of the World Health Organization as well as medical experts such as W. Ian Lipkin and Larry Brilliant. Principal photography started in Hong Kong in September 2010, and continued in Chicago, Atlanta, London, Dublin, Geneva, and San Francisco Bay Area until February 2011.

Contagion premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in Venice, Italy on September 3, 2011, and was theatrically released on September 9, 2011. Commercially, the film made $136.5 million against its $60 million production budget. Critics praised it for its narrative and the performances, as did scientists for its accuracy. The film received renewed popularity in 2020 due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.


Plot

Returning from a Hong Kong business trip, Beth Emhoff has an affair with her ex-boyfriend during a Chicago layover. Two days later, back home in suburban Minneapolis, Beth s husband, Mitch, rushes her to the hospital when she suffers a seizure; she dies from a previously unknown virus. Returning home, Mitch finds that his 6-year-old stepson, Clark, has also died. Mitch is isolated but found to be naturally immune. After being released, he protectively keeps his teenage daughter, Jory, quarantined at home.

In Atlanta, Department of Homeland Security representatives meet with Dr. Ellis Cheever of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) over concerns that the disease may be a bioweapon. Cheever dispatches Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, to Minneapolis where she traces everyone having had contact with Beth. She negotiates with reluctant local bureaucrats to commit resources for a public health response. Soon after, Mears becomes infected and dies. As the novel virus spreads, several cities are placed under quarantine, causing panic buying, widespread looting, and violence.

At the CDC, Dr. Ally Hextall determines the virus is a combination of genetic material from pig and bat-borne viruses. Scientists are unable to discover a cell culture to grow the newly identified MEV-1. Cheever determines the virus too virulent to be researched at multiple labs and restricts all work to one government site. Hextall orders University of California, San Francisco researcher Dr. Ian Sussman to destroy his samples. Believing he is close to finding a viable cell culture, Sussman violates the order and identifies a usable cell culture, from which Hextall develops a vaccine. Scientists determine the virus is spread by respiratory droplets and fomites, with an R0 of four when the virus mutates; they project that 1 in 12 of the world population will be infected, with a 25–30% mortality rate.

Conspiracy theorist Alan Krumwiede blogs about the virus. He claims to have cured himself of the virus using a homeopathic cure derived from forsythia. People seeking forsythia violently overwhelm pharmacies. Krumwiede, having faked being infected to boost sales of forsythia, is arrested for conspiracy and securities fraud.

Hextall inoculates herself with the experimental vaccine, then visits her infected father. She does not contract MEV-1 and the vaccine is declared a success. The CDC awards vaccinations by lottery based on birthdates. By this time, the pandemic s death toll has reached 2.5 million in the U.S. and 26 million worldwide.

Earlier in Hong Kong, World Health Organization (WHO) epidemiologist Dr. Leonora Orantes and public health officials comb through security videotapes of Beth s contacts in a Macau casino and identify her as the index case. Government official Sun Feng kidnaps Orantes as leverage to obtain a vaccine for his village, holding her for months. WHO officials provide the village with the earliest vaccines and she is released. When she learns the vaccines were placebos, she goes to warn the village. Mitch stages a home prom for Jory, as life begins to return to normal.

In a flashback to the spillover event, a bulldozer from Emhoff s company clears rainforest in China, disturbing bats. One bat finds shelter in a pig farm and drops an infected piece of banana that is then consumed by a pig. The pig is then slaughtered and is prepared by a chef in a Macau casino, who, without washing his hands, transmits the virus to Beth via a handshake.


Cast

  • Matt Damon as Mitch Emhoff
  • Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Ellis Cheever
  • Jude Law as Alan Krumwiede
  • Gwyneth Paltrow as Beth Emhoff
  • Kate Winslet as Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer
  • Bryan Cranston as Rear Admiral Lyle Haggerty, United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps
  • Jennifer Ehle as Dr. Ally Hextall, a research scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Elliott Gould as Dr. Ian Sussman, a scientist at the University of California San Francisco
  • Chin Han as Sun Feng
  • Marion Cotillard as Dr. Leonora Orantes, an epidemiologist with the World Health Organization

Additionally, the film also stars John Hawkes as Roger, CDC custodian and acquaintance of Dr. Cheever; Anna Jacoby-Heron as Jory Emhoff, daughter of Mitch Emhoff; Josie Ho as the sister of Li Fai, who was the first to be infected with MEV-1 in Hong Kong; Sanaa Lathan as Aubrey Cheever, fiancée of Dr. Cheever; Demetri Martin as Dr. David Eisenberg, CDC colleague of Dr. Hextall; Armin Rohde as Damian Leopold, a WHO official; Enrico Colantoni as Dennis French, a Department of Homeland Security official; Larry Clarke as Dave, a Minnesota health official working with Dr. Mears; and Monique Gabriela Curnen as Lorraine Vasquez, a print journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle.


Production

Conception and writing

There s a scene in The Informant! where Matt (Damon) is watching Scott Bakula s character talk on the phone and Scott coughs on the phone, and there s this whole ramp that Matt goes off on of Oh, great, now what happens? He gets sick and then I m going to get it, my kids are going to get it. I ve always been fascinated by transmissibility, so I said to Steven, I want to do an interesting thriller version of a pandemic movie and he said, Great! Let s do that instead.

Scott Z. Burns

Story development for Contagion coincided with Burns collaboration with Soderbergh in The Informant! (2009). The duo had initially planned to create a biographical film on Leni Riefenstahl, a trailblazer in German cinema during the 1930s and a figure in the rise of the Nazi Party. Soderbergh later contacted Burns to cancel the project, as he thought that a film about Riefenstahl would struggle to attract an audience. Intrigued with the field of transmission, Burns suggested that they instead create a film that centered on a pandemic situation— an interesting thriller version of a pandemic movie . His main objective was to construct a medical thriller that really felt like what could happen .

Burns consulted with Larry Brilliant, renowned for his work in eradicating smallpox, to develop an accurate perception of a pandemic event. He had seen one of Brilliant s TED presentations, which he was fascinated by, and realized that the point of view of people within that field isn t If this is going to happen , it s When is this going to happen? Brilliant introduced Burns to epidemiologist W. Ian Lipkin. With the aid of these physicians, the producers were able to obtain additional perspectives from representatives of the World Health Organization. Burns also met with the author of The Coming Plague, Laurie Garrett. Her 1995 book helped Burns consider a variety of potential plots for the film. He wanted to feature an official from the CDC, and ultimately decided to use an epidemiologist, since that role requires interacting with people while tracking the disease.

Although he had done research on pandemics six months prior to the 2009 flu pandemic, that outbreak enhanced his understanding of the societal apparatus that responds during the onset stages of a pandemic. To him, it was not solely the virus itself that one had to be concerned about, but how society handles the situation. I saw them come to life , Burns said, and I saw issues about, Well, do you close the schools and if you close the schools, then who stays home with the kids? And will everyone keep their kids at home? Things happening online, which is where the Jude Law character came from, that there s going to be information that comes out online where people want to be ahead of the curve, so some people will write things about anti-virals or different treatment protocols, and so there s always going to be an information and that information also has sort of a viral pulse.

Filming

In conjunction with overseeing the directing process, Soderbergh functioned as a cinematographer for Contagion. The film was wholly shot using Red Digital Cinema s RED One MX digital camera, which has a 4.5K image resolution. Since he hoped for the premise to be authentic and as realistic as possible , Soderbergh opted not to film in the studio. There s, to me, nothing more satisfying occasionally than making someplace look like someplace else on film and having nobody know the difference. For choosing cities, Soderbergh felt that they couldn t go anywhere where one of our characters hasn t been , since he wanted to portray an epic , yet intimate scenario. He explained,

We can t cut to a city or a group of extras that we ve never been to that we don’t know personally. That was our rule. And that’s a pretty significant rule to adhere to in a movie in which you re trying to give a sense of something that’s happening on a large scale, but we felt that all of the elements that we had issues with prior, when we see any kind of disaster film, we re centered around that idea.

Principal photography started in Hong Kong in September 2010, and continued for approximately two weeks. Soderbergh was originally hoping to also film in mainland China, though Moviefone journalist David Ehrlich believed that permission from the Chinese government was unlikely to be forthcoming. Although producers also intended to establish a filming location in one of the many casinos in Macau, the Jumbo Floating Restaurant in Hong Kong s Aberdeen Harbour was used instead for the casino setting, as filming within the vicinity of a gambling establishment is prohibited by law. To move the equipment for the casino scenes to the on-the-water location, producers hired a number of locals to carry out the task, as they were accustomed to using sampans like trucks . Additional locations included the Hong Kong International Airport, InterContinental Hong Kong, and the Princess Margaret Hospital.

Principal photography relocated in the following month to Chicago, Illinois, which served as the nexus for production. Much of the cityscape and its surrounding suburbs were used to emulate Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Atlanta, Georgia, in addition to serving as backdrop for Chicago itself. Since principal photography occurred during the winter months, snowfall was a prerequisite in simulating a persistent coldness that encompassed a hypersensitive kind of glare . Within the city limits, filming locations were installed at the Shedd Aquarium, O Hare International Airport, and Midway Airport. Arguably the largest sets were at the General Jones Armory, which was converted into an infirmary, and a major location shoot occurred in Waukegan, about 40 miles north of Chicago, where a portion of the Amstutz Expressway was used to simulate the Dan Ryan Expressway. Production also took place at Sherman Hospital in Elgin and Central Elementary School in Wilmette, and also in Downtown Western Springs, where the grocery store scene was filmed.

Filming moved once again in January 2011 to the Druid Hills quadrant of Atlanta, which contains the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The restricted nature of the CDC campus meant that producers were only allowed to shoot exterior scenes of the area, as well as within the parking garage and reception area for the CDC s museum onsite. Principal photography then proceeded into Atlanta s central business district and Decatur, before advancing to London, Geneva, and lastly San Francisco, California, in the ensuing month. The San Francisco Film Commission charged filmmakers $300 per day for production within the city limits. In the North Beach and Potrero Hill sections of the city, production designer Howard Cummings scattered trash and discarded clothing on the ground to depict the rapid decline of civilization. For the Civic Center set, over 2,000 extras were sought for in background roles; actors who were a part of the Screen Actors Guild were paid $139 per day, while nonunion workers received $64 per day for their work. Other filming locations were established at Golden Gate Park, Chinatown, and Candlestick Park; it cost $60,000 to rent the football stadium for six days. Genentech Hall at the University of California, San Francisco Mission Bay campus was used for filming also, renamed Mendel Hall for the occasion.

Music

Cliff Martinez composed the film s soundtrack, which was his first big-screen score for Soderbergh since Solaris in 2002. Given that the pacing of the music was one of Soderbergh s biggest concerns, Martinez needed to maintain a brisk pace throughout the soundtrack, while also conveying fear and hope within the music. I tried to create the sound of anxiety. And at key, strategic moments I tried to use the music to conjure up the sense of tragedy and loss. Martinez incorporated orchestral elements, and fused them with the predominantly electronic sounds of the score. He noted that the sound palette for Contagion came by way of combining three very different approaches Steven went through as he was cutting the film. Martinez received a rough cut for the film in October 2010, which contained music that was imbued with elements of The French Connection (1971) and Marathon Man (1976). He loved those two soundtracks, and composed a few pieces in their style. A few months later, he acquired a new cut, which included music influenced by German electronic group Tangerine Dream. Toward the end, Soderbergh changed again and used contemporary soundtrack music that was more energetic and more rhythmic . Ultimately, Martinez used aspects of all three approaches: I reasoned that combining them would not only be effective but would give the score a style all its own. The score was released by WaterTower Music in September 2011.


Themes and analysis

Soderbergh was motivated to make an ultra-realistic film about the public health and scientific response to a pandemic. The film s hyperlink style (often quickly moving back and forth from geographically distant places and persons) emphasizes both the historically new perils of contemporary networked globalization and timeless qualities of the human condition (recalling famous literary treatments of epidemics, such as Albert Camus s The Plague). The movie touches on a variety of themes, including the factors which drive mass panic and collapse of social order, the scientific process for characterizing and containing a novel pathogen, balancing personal motives against professional responsibilities and ethics in the face of an existential threat, the limitations and consequences of public health responses, and the pervasiveness of interpersonal connections which can serve as vectors to spread disease. Soderbergh acknowledged the salience of these post-apocalyptic themes is heightened by reactions to the September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina. The movie was intended to realistically convey the intense and unnerving social and scientific reactions to a pandemic. The real-life epidemics such as the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak and the 2009 flu pandemic have been inspirations and influences in the film. The chain of contagion involving bats and pigs is reminiscent of the trail of the Nipah virus (which infects cells in the respiratory and nervous systems, the same cells as the virus in the movie) that originated in Malaysia in 1997, which similarly involved the disturbance of a bat colony by deforestation. In fact, the film uses a Nipah virus protein model in a scene describing the recombination found in the fictional paramyxovirus.

The film presents examples of crowd psychology and collective behavior which can lead to mass hysteria and the loss of social order. The bafflement, outrage, and helplessness associated with the lack of information, combined with new media such as blogs, allow conspiracy theorists like Krumwiede to spread disinformation and fear, which become dangerous contagions themselves. Dr. Cheever must balance the need for full disclosure but avoid a panic and allow the time to characterize and respond to an unknown virus. The movie indirectly critiques the greed, selfishness, and hypocrisy of isolated acts in contemporary culture and the unintended consequences they can have in the context of a pandemic. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends social distancing by forcibly isolating the healthy to limit the spread of the disease, which stands in stark opposition to contemporary demands for social networking. Responding to the pandemic presents a paradox, as the contagiousness and lethality of the virus instills deep distrust of others but surviving and limiting the spread of the disease also requires individuals to work together.

Against this existential threat and fraying social order, the film also explores how individual characters bend or break existing rules for both selfish and selfless reasons. Dr. Hextall violates protocols by testing a potential vaccine on herself, Dr. Sussman continues experiments on a cell line despite orders to destroy his samples, Dr. Cheever notifies his fiancée to leave the city before a public quarantine is imposed, Sun Feng kidnaps Dr. Orantes to secure vaccine supplies for his village, Dr. Mears continues her containment work despite contracting the virus, and Krumwiede is paid to use his blog to peddle snake oil cures so as to drive demand and profit for investors in alternative medicine. Soderbergh repeatedly uses the cinematographic style of lingering and focusing on the items and objects which are touched by the infected and become vectors (fomites) to infect other people. These objects link characters together and reinforce the multi-narrative hyperlink cinema style which Soderbergh developed in Traffic (2000) and Syriana (2005), which he produced.

The story also highlights examples of political cronyism (a plane to evacuate Dr. Mears from Minneapolis is instead diverted to evacuate a congressman), platitudes and rigid thinking (public health officials consider postponing the closing of shopping malls until after the Thanksgiving shopping season), federal responders trying to navigate 50 separate state-level public health policies, and the heroism of federal bureaucrats. Soderbergh does not use type-cast pharmaceutical executives or politicians as villains, but instead portrays bloggers such as Krumwiede in a negative light. Social media play a role in Krumwiede s accusations against Dr. Cheever and in Emhoff s daughter s attempts to carry on a relationship with her boyfriend through text messaging. Other responses in the movie, such as Emhoff s appropriating a shotgun from a friend s abandoned house to protect his home from looters, imposition of federal quarantines and curfews, the allocation of vaccines by lottery, inadequate federal preparation and responses, and use of bar-coded wristbands to identify the inoculated highlight the complex tensions between freedom and order in responding to a pandemic. Soderbergh uses Emhoff to illustrate the micro-effects of macro-level decisions.


Release

Theatrical

Contagion premiered on September 3, 2011, at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in Venice, Italy, and a wider release followed on September 9. In the United States and Canada, Contagion was shown in 3,222 theaters, of which 254 screenings occurred at IMAX venues.

Home media

Contagion was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America on January 3, 2012, and in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2012. In its first week of release, the film topped the DVD chart with 411,000 units sold for $6.16 million. That same week it sold 274,000 Blu-ray copies for $4.93 million, topping that chart as well. DVD sales dropped during the second week of release, with 193,000 units sold for $2.89 million. As of early July 2012, Contagion had sold 802,535 copies in DVD, for $12.01 million in revenue.


Reception

Box office

Various American commercial analysts anticipated that the film would have ticket sales of between $20–$25 million during its opening weekend, which it did, grossing $8 million on its first day, and $23.1 million for the entire weekend. Of that total, ten percent ($2.3 million) of the gross came from IMAX screenings. By outgrossing competitor The Help ($8.7M), Contagion became the highest-grossing film of the week. Demographically, the opening audience was evenly divided among gender, according to Warner Bros., while eighty percent of spectators were of the age of 25 and over. Contagion did well the following weekend, generating a $14.5 million box office, but came in second to the re-release of The Lion King (1994). The third week saw the box office drop by forty percent, for a total gross of $8.7 million. By the fourth week, Contagion had dropped to ninth place at the box office with $5 million, and the number of theaters narrowed to 2,744. The film completed its theatrical run on December 15, 2011, at which point its total domestic gross was $75.6 million.

Contagion made its international debut in six foreign markets the same weekend as its American release, including Italy, where it achieved $663,000 from 309 theaters. The first week saw Contagion gross $2.1 million from 553 establishments—a per-theater average of $3,797. Foreign grosses for Contagion would remain relatively stagnant up until the weekend of October 14–16, 2011, when the film expanded into several additional European markets. Out of the $3.9 million that was generated from 1,100 venues during that weekend, nearly 40% of the gross originated from Spain, where the film earned $1.5 million from 325 theaters. With the growing expansion of the film in seven additional markets, the weekend of October 21–23, 2011 saw Contagion take in $9.8 million from 2,505 locations, increasing the international gross to $22.9 million. In the United Kingdom, one of the film s significant international releases, Contagion opened in third place at the box office with $2.3 million from 398 theaters; it subsequently garnered the highest debut gross of a Soderbergh film since Ocean s Thirteen (2007). International grosses for Contagion totaled $60.8 million.

Critical response

Contagion has received positive reviews by film commentators. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 85% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 278 reviews, with an average rating of 7.10/10. The website s critics consensus states, Tense, tightly plotted, and bolstered by a stellar cast, Contagion is an exceptionally smart – and scary – disaster movie. On Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 based on the critiques from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 70 based on 38 reviews, indicating generally favorable reviews . Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B− on an A+ to F scale.

The Guardian journalist Peter Bradshaw felt that Contagion blended well together as a film, although opined that Soderbergh was somewhat unsuccessful in channeling the fears, frights, and the massive sense of loss of ordinary people . To David Denby of The New Yorker, the brilliant film was serious, precise, frightening, and emotionally enveloping . Despite applauding Soderbergh for hopscotching tidily between the intimate and international , The Atlantic s Christopher Orr was disappointed with the film s detached and clinical disposition, which led him to conclude that Contagion should have gone with a more inflexible rationale, or a lesson beyond wash your hands often and hope you re lucky . For all the craft that went into it, Contagion is ultimately beyond good or bad, beyond criticism. It just is, professed The Atlantic writer. Describing it as a smart and spooky installment, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote, Mr. Soderbergh doesn t milk your tears as things fall apart, but a passion that can feel like cold rage is inscribed in his images of men and women isolated in the frame, in the blurred point of view of the dying and in the insistent stillness of a visual style that seems like an exhortation to look. In regards to the story, Salon columnist Andrew O Hehir avouched that the crisp and succinct narrative matched up to the beautifully composed visuals of the film. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter proclaimed that Soderbergh and Burns effectively created anxiety in the shrewd and unsensationalistic film without becoming exaggerated, a sentiment echoed by Jeannette Catsoulis of NPR, who insisted that the duo weave multiple characters into a narrative that s complex without being confusing, and intelligent without being baffling . Writing for The Village Voice, Karina Longworth thought that Contagion reflected the self-consciousness and experimentation of some of Soderbergh s previous efforts, such as the Ocean s trilogy and The Girlfriend Experience (2009).

The performances of multiple cast members were frequently mentioned in the reviews. Lou Lumenick of the New York Post asserted that Ehle was outstanding , a view that was analogous to that of The Boston Globe journalist Wesley Morris, who praised not only Ehle s performance, but the work of the undercard such as Cranston, Gould, and Colantoni, among others. Similarly, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Ehle the best in show . As Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan summed up, Two-time Tony-winning actress Jennifer Ehle comes close to stealing the picture with this quietly yet quirkily empathetic performance. With regard to Law, The Philadelphia Inquirer s Steven Rea stated that the actor portrayed the character with a nutty confidence; Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle agreed with Rea s thoughts. Damon provided the film s relatable heart , according to Forrest Wickman of Slate, who concluded that even with her controlled performance, Winslet lives up to her head-of-the-class reputation even in an unusually small role .

The character development of multiple characters produced varying response from critics. Contrary to Mitch s stance as the main protagonist, Michael O Sullivan of The Washington Post felt that Contagion treats him with an oddly clinical detachment . In particular Law s character, Alan Krumwiede, attracted commentary from Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who wrote, The blogger subplot doesn t interact clearly with the main story lines and functions mostly as an alarming but vague distraction.

Scientific response

Ferris Jabr of New Scientist approved of Contagion for accurately portraying the successes and frustrations of science. Jabr cites story elements such as the fact that before researchers can study a virus, they need to figure out how to grow it in cell cultures in the lab, without the virus destroying all the cells as examples of accurate depictions of science. Carl Zimmer, a science writer, praised the film, stating, It shows how reconstructing the course of an outbreak can provide crucial clues, such as how many people an infected person can give a virus to, how many of them get sick, and how many of them die. He also describes a conversation with the film s scientific consultant, W. Ian Lipkin, in which Lipkin defended the rapid generation of a vaccine in the film. Zimmer wrote that Lipkin and his colleagues are now capable of figuring out how to trigger immune reactions to exotic viruses from animals in a matter of weeks, not months. And once they ve created a vaccine, they don t have to use Eisenhower-era technology to manufacture it in bulk. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccination expert, stated that typically when movies take on science, they tend to sacrifice the science in favor of drama. That wasn t true here. Offit appreciated the film s usage of concepts such as R0 and fomites, as well as the fictional strain s origins, which was based on the Nipah virus.


Legacy

In 2020, the film received renewed popularity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By March 2020, Contagion was the seventh-most-popular film on iTunes, listed as the number two catalog title on Warner Bros. compared to its number 270 rank the past December 2019, and had average daily visits on piracy websites increase by 5,609 percent in January 2020 compared to the previous month. HBO Now also reported that Contagion had been the most viewed film for two weeks straight.

As the film continued to regain popularity, the cast reunited through an infomercial PSA in partnership with the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in March 2020. Regarding its resurgence in 2020, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns responded in an interview with The Washington Post saying, It is sad, and it is frustrating. Sad because so many people are dying and getting sick. Frustrating because people still don’t seem to grasp the situation we are now in and how it could have been avoided by properly funding the science around all of this. It is also surreal to me that people from all over the world write to me asking how I knew it would involve a bat or how I knew the term social distancing. I didn’t have a crystal ball — I had access to great expertise. So, if people find the movie to be accurate, it should give them confidence in the public health experts who are out there right now trying to guide us.

In February 2021, British Health Secretary Matt Hancock revealed that watching the scramble for vaccines in Contagion inspired him to order a much larger quantity of COVID-19 vaccines for the United Kingdom than his advisers recommended, accelerating the UK s eventual rollout of its vaccination programme ahead of other European countries.

In December 2020, Soderbergh announced that a philosophical sequel for the film was in the works.


Condition

New

Publisher

Warner Home Video

Rating MPA

Pg-13

Recording Length

106 Minutes

Recording Studio

Warner Home Video

Format

DVD

Age Group

Adult

Amazon ASIN

B006LAO92I

UPC / EAN

883929191758

Year

2011

ReleaseDate

2011-09-09

RuntimeMins

106

RuntimeStr

1h 46min

Awards

Awards, 2 wins & 14 nominations

Directors

Steven Soderbergh

Writers

Scott Z. Burns

Stars

Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law

Produced by

Zakaria Alaoui, Chen On Chu, Gregory Jacobs, Jonathan King, Michael Polaire, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher, Jeff Skoll, Ricky Strauss

Music by

Cliff Martinez

Cinematography by

Steven Soderbergh

Film Editing by

Stephen Mirrione

Casting By

Carmen Cuba

Production Design by

Howard Cummings

Art Direction by

Abdellah Baadil, Simon Dobbin, David Lazan, Bret August Tanzer, Lydia Zoe

Set Decoration by

Cindy Carr

Costume Design by

Louise Frogley

Makeup Department

Fríða Aradóttir, Kate Biscoe, Andrea C. Brotherton, Fannie Chan, Nathaniel De Lineadeus, Stephan Dupuis, Kay Georgiou, Alma Izquierdo, Rosalind Jones-Crosby, Laurel Kelly, Aimee Lippert, Dominic Mango, Holland Markis, Sarah Mays, Maria O Reilly, Suzi Ostos, Mimi Palazon, Andrea Pino, Thomas Terhaar, Samuel Wong, Daria V. Wright, Aurora Bergere, Kimberly L. Boundas, Melinda Dunn, Latrice Edwards, Vivian Guzman, Lisa Jelic, Chris Lyons, Nancie Marsalis, LunYé Marsh, Cheryl Ann Nick, Jennifer Tremont, Vicki Vacca

Production Management

Julie M. Anderson, David Brown, Connie Cheung, David Kirchner, Francine Lusser, Alessandra Moresco, Juliette Perréard, Michael Polaire, Christa Vausbinder, Johnny Wang, Bill Wu, B. Ted Deiker, Afnahn Khan, Gérard Monier, Mark Scoon

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director

Trey Batchelor, Brendon Breese, Wai Kei Cheng, Lanbo Cheuk, Joey Coughlin, Yann Mari Faget, Jason Halley, Ahmed Hatimi, Gregory Jacobs, Eric Richard Lasko, Nikki Lau, Cheuk Pan Lee, Lemon Liu, Florian Nussbaumer, Samar Pollitt, Sunni-Ali Powell, Andy Spellman, Jody Spilkoman, Mohammed Hamza Regragui

Art Department

Joseph J. Allen, Andy Au, Nina Bachmann, Dean Backer, Nate Belove, Mark Boucher, David Brennan, Robert J. Carlyle, Keith Cheung, Robbie Conal, David Cortez, Chewie K. Darsow, Ricky Dear, Gary Dempsey, Tanja Deshida, Simon Dobbin, Brad Einhorn, Rod England, Ricky Eyres, William A. Fobert, Michael D. Gianneschi, Stephanie Gilliam, Lee Gordon, Halsted Craig Hannah, Kristin Hanson, Chi Hang Ho, Peter Hudson, Bam Hughes, Bruce Hui, Chun-Wah Hui, Margaret Hungerford, Tula Jeng, Eric R. Johnson, John P. Kenny III, David W. Krummel, Franziska Kummer, Tani Kunitake, Jason Lam, Carolyn Lassek, Zoe Lee, Cat Leung, Tsz Fung Li, David Loya, Andrew Murdock, Brea Murphy, James Nichols, Jon Nicholson, Roderick Nunnally, Tyler Osman, Jeff Ozimek, Jami Primmer, Rachid Quiat, Shari Ratliff, Shane Reed, Matt Reese, Brent Regan, Jack Rogers, David Ronan, John H. Schulz, Aaron Shores, David Soukup, Bret August Tanzer, Karen Teneyck, David Tennenbaum, Scott Troha, Calvin Tsoi, Wai-Yin Tsoi, Merje Veski, James Bryant Wactor, Kloud Wan, Spence Warren, Michael C. Woodcock, Carrie Yiu, Susan Alegria, Paul V. Allen Sr., Colin Bach, Nicole Balzarini, Bil Barnes, Anthony Barracca, Patrick Beals, Bonnie Briggs, Adrian Cortes, Zach Doherty, Phillip Ellman, Anthony Joseph Fatigato, Carol Francoso, Gary Happ, Michael A. Heath, Kelly Hogan, Holli Hopkins-McGinley, Bam Hughes, Steve Hull, Abdenabi Izlaguen, Ryan Patrick Kelly, Mark Kessler, Andrew Lewis, Konrad Lewis, Miles Logan, Nathan Mack, Krystal MacKnight, Quentin Matthys, Jono Moles, Dan Molnar, Mike Monckton, Katy Moore-Kozachik, Chuck O Malley, Chad Owens, Walter J. Piers, Taraja Ramsess, Katrina Rice, Greg Sanger, Sabrina Siebert, Larry Szymanowski, James Bryant Wactor, Jody Weisenfeld

Sound Department

David Betancourt, Larry Blake, Matt Coby, Scott Curtis, Dawn Fintor, Lisa Gillespie, Matt Gruber, Javier M. Hernández, Angus Mak, Matthias Neumann, John Pospisil, Michael Primmer, Alicia Stevenson, Billy Theriot, Dennis Towns, Mark Weingarten, David A. Whittaker, Byron Wilson, Oscar Cordova, Karl Dondlinger, Christopher Joseph Harris, Darin Heinis, Tommy Lindquist, Christopher Mills, Adam Mohundro, Neil Riha, Brian Seagrave, Zach Wrobel, Nourdine Zaoui

Special Effects by

Michael Ahasay, Gunter Anderson, Ron Bolanowski, Darrell Burgess, Blake E. Matthys, John D. Milinac, Dieter Sturm, Heath Winn, Kuong Tat Wong, Ryan Evans, Jeffrey Hurt, John J. Slove Jr., Yvonne Sturm

Visual Effects by

Daniel Lorenzo Alvarez, Aaron Brown, Shauna Bryan, Chad E. Collier, Karl Coyner, Michael Sean Foley, Alex Gitler, Randy Goux, Jayse Hansen, Peter Hart, Heather Elisa Hill, Hiroki Iijima, Nat Jencks, Jinnie Pak, Chi Pham, David Rey, Casey Rolseth, David Santiago, Tiago Santos, Aaron Schultz, Rasha Shalaby, Thomas J. Smith, Michele C. Vallillo, Jason Wardle, Xye, Michael S. Harbour, Raechel Kasprzak, James P. Noon, Gustavo A. Pablik, Jason Pomerantz, Chris B. Schnitzer, Scott Steyns, James William Visconti III

Stunts

Janeshia Adams-Ginyard, Dan Bell, Robin Lynn Bonaccorsi, Rocky Capella, Paul Crawford, Tobiasz Daszkiewicz, Lisa Dempsey, Alessandro Di Martini, Shawnah Donley, Thomas M. Ficke, James Fierro, Mike Guerra, Mark Harper, Sara Holden, Larry Lam, Rick LeFevour, Tom Lowell, Daniel Maldonado, James R. Mammoser, Mike Martinez, Danton Mew, Natalie M. Meyer, Alexandre Ottoveggio, Michael Owen, Brian Peters, Rex Reddick, R.A. Rondell, Mike Sasse, Courtney Schwartz, Greg Sloan, Monika Sloan, James D. Weston II, Rich Wilkie, Robert G. Beck, Liisa Cohen, Aaron Crippen, Elizabeth Davidovich, Shawnah Donley, Patrick Dunham, Todd Gillenardo, Dante Ha, Tim Halpin, Michael Hilow, Mary Karcz, Luke Kearney, Jason Kehler, Jeff Kehoe, Kevin Larson, Matthew LeFevour, Nina Leone, Will Leong, Christian Litke, Tim Martin, Tim Meredith, Jeff Mosley, Marty Murray, Chris Nolte, Linda Perlin, Scott Philyaw, Jeff Shannon, Lonnie R. Smith Jr., Kevin Sorensen, Todd Rogers Terry, John Turk, Tony Vella, Crescent Wood, Ryan Young

Camera and Electrical Department

James W. Apted, Claudette Barius, Abderrahim Bissar, Kevin Boyd, Shaun Braswell, Henry Cantor, Thomas S. Ciciura, Dan Dobson, Greg Fausak, Chris Glomp, Daniel A. Guerrero, Tim Guffin, David Henri, Jason Hooper, Matt Johnson, Louis Jong, Ivan Kadlec, April Kelley, Russell Kennedy, Billy Ko, James Kumarelas, Chun-Shing Lam, Chun-Wan Lam, Didier Lebel, Wa-wai Luk, David Louie Lukasik, Duane Charles Manwiller, Steven Meizler, John Joseph Minardi, Wilson Mylander, Patrick B. O Brien, Felix Rivera, John S. Robertson, Spencer M. Rohan, Jason Storandt, Paul Toomey, Jerry Tran, Eric Walther, Peter Walts, Hunter Whalen, Bradley Everett Wilson, Sebastián Almeida, Sam Andrzejewski, Noah Banks, Michael Best, Michael Ryan Burns, Ian Chriss, Jim Crowther, Jaime Dawkins, Ronald Dragosh, Kenneth D. Emanuele, Mark Funnell, Bob Gomez, Benjamin Kilmer, Toby Lawrence, Duane Charles Manwiller, Corneel Mertens, David Mong, David Shakibanasab, Benny Smyth, Scott Thiele, Porter Versfelt III, Marc Wall, Mark N. Woods

Casting Department

Madalena Chan, Emma Fletcher, Katrina Wandel George, Nina Henninger, Aaron Ho, Rich King, Bill Marinella, Becca McCracken, Amy Newbold, Doug Ritzenthaler, Claire Simon, Erin Stewart Tiedje, Cody Bayne, Shelby Cherniet, Brian Entler, Julianna LaRosa, Rose Locke, Jessica Gisin Needham, Antonin Schopfer, Amanda Tabak, Michael Warwick

Costume and Wardrobe Department

Jeanie Baker, Nancy Cavallaro, Stella Cottini, Tom Cummins, Jennifer Jobst, Laura Kaminski, Brittany McLeod, Valerie T. O Brien, Dorothy Pa, Iliana Sanchez, Richard Schoen, Amanda Vinopal, Jane Blank, Julia Gombert, Rachael Ohman, Tracy Reuter, Dana Schondelmeyer, Senna Shanti, Cassiopeia Smith

Editorial Department

Corey Bayes, Philip Beckner, Jade E. Chatham, John Daro, Jeremy Edwards, Nat Jencks, Paul Lavoie, Tamara McDonough, John Nicolard, David Rosenthal, Bill Schultz, Spike Schwab, Wai Wing Tong, Brian Ufberg, Des Carey, Amy McGrath, Clare McKee, Dan Muscarella, Tim Weyers, Lee Wimer

Location Management

Mohamed Benhmamane, Adam Boor, David Broder, Stephen Dirkes, Dow Griffith, Yves Herren, Angel Ho, Martin L. Hudson, Saisie M. Jang, Dan Kemp, Ken Lavet, Daniel Lee, Jeannie Mak, Mark Mamalakis, Guy Morrison, Natasha Parker, Matthew Riutta, Jonathan Shedd, Matthew Tai, Miguel Tapia, Kenny Wong, Chi Wai Yan, Khalid Ameskane, James Fingers Buxton, Darrick Chan, Faical Hajji, Charlie Hayes, Nicholas Jamison, Lynsey Tamsen Jones, Eric McCoy, Ric Perada, Ben Piltz, Marcus Q Quandt, Debra A. Wilson

Music Department

Helen Z. Altenbach, David Low, Randy Miller, Adam Olmsted, Mac Quayle, Ryan Robinson, Dennis S. Sands, James Thatcher, Gregory Tripi, Rich Wheeler, Sam Zeines, Carter Armstrong, Tom Hardisty, Frank Macchia, Bart Samolis, Martin St. Pierre

Script and Continuity Department

Annie Welles

Transportation Department

Ali Bakkioui, Jeff Bova, Jimmy Carruthers, Jeannie Cummings, Chris Deguzman, Clark Dolan, Redouane Fihi, Michael Freeman, Shane Greedy, David Ho, Thaddeus E. Larkowski, Dannie Lenz, Aaron Ngo, Wai Kit Pang, Stephen Roland, George A. Sack, Carl Scott, Kelly Yon, Mounir Badia, Guy Bostock, Bundy Chanock, Chris George, Kirk Huston, Dan J. Latham II, Steve Lewis, John Lux Jr., Tim May, Jon Smith, Chase Spitzer, Bill Walker, Robert Wallace

Additional Crew

Terrence Abbott, Abde Sallam Ait Abdellah, Wendy Altman-Cohen, H. Leah Amir, Mardie Anderson, Erik Andreasen, Mark Assad, Donnell Barnes, Taoufiq Belemqadem, Stephanie Beman, Lark Bernini, David Birch, Ira Blumen, Mike Bondi, Larry Brilliant, Kevin Ray Brown, Joe Brunory, Nicholas Carranza, Elizabeth Chambers, David Champion, Cassandra Chan, Jenny Chan, Kwok-Kit Chan, Hoi Wai Chang, Freddi Cheung, Chelsea Christer, Luke Crawford, Fabiano D Amato, Richard Daldry, Kate Rees Davies, Ted M. Davila, Gabe de Kelaita, Elena de Leonardis, Jonelle Castillo Deal, Suzanne Debrunner, Martin Delrio, Matt Demier, Drew Durepos, Robb Earnest, Heidi Erl, Man Fong, Coco Francini, Michael Franck, Pablo Gambetta, Laurie Garrett, Kahli Gaskin, Billy Goldberg, Heather Gothie, Natasha K. Griffith, Erin Grindler, Jennifer Hackney, Cheryl Harris, Gregory C. Haynes, Susan Hegarty, Brandon Heidt, Jason Hinkel, Aaron Ho, Elizabeth Hurley, Kristen Irving-Jordan, Kevin Keating, Claire Kenny, Lexi Kirsch, Duncan Lamberson, David Lanes, Chor Chun Lau, Kok Fai Lee, Ross Lee, Ina Lereine, Feyon Li, Ian Lipkin, Stephanie Logan, Cathie Ma, Kathryn Madden, Joseph Malloch, Hiromi Marder, Olivia McCallum, Darin McCormick-Millett, Shelby McDaniel, Tracey McNamara, Gian Mitchell, Elaine Mongeon, Maureen Mottram, Lisa Nichols, Rick Nieves, Colin J. O Hara, Robert O Quinn, Brent Ogburn, Matt Ott, Lindsey Passen, Ina Petersen, Liz Probst, RoseMary Prodonovich, Rachel Redding, Mary Frances Reidy, Mayda Renizzi-Holt, Deborah Ricketts, Ken Ryan, Michael J. Ryan, Connie Schmaljohn, Ericka N. Shane, Matthew Shreder, Mark Smolinski, Carolina Solorzano, Ryan Steinhouse, Spooky Stevens, Widad Taha, Cynthia D. Tappy, Alyssa Telford, Isobel Thomas, Sophie Treacher, Daniela Tully, Michael P. Twombly, Maurice Vy, Chelsea Wehner, Don Weiss, Jessie Sasser White, Michelle Wilson, Nathan Wolfe, George Wong, Bing Yin, Kenneth Yoder, Sydney Yuman, Saad Ajedigue, Darby Allen, Mel Barries, Michael Bean, Robert G. Beck, Bouchra Bentayeb, Mustapha Bentayeb, Mark Blecha, Genona Blue, Brittany McCoy Boardman, William Bowling, Elizabeth Kate Branem, Alrik Bursell, Joe Caplan, Alan Chu, Nikko DeLuna, Erin Douglass, Desiree Dumas, Justin Dybowski, Adelita Espinoza, Karen Franco, Larry Gilbert, Camille Goldberg, Susannah Greason, Erin Grindler, Marcy Guiragossian, Angela Higley, Apryl Hill, Stephanie Jeter, Ashley Johnson, Brendan Jones, Holly Kang, Melissa Kaye, Amir R. Khan, Karen Kindig, Lauren Knox, Christina Kouyoumdzoglou, Paula Lima, Juliet Lopez, Christian Munoz-Donoso, Jason Neisewander, Jim Nieciecki, Nicole Oesterle, Daniel A. Parker, Andrew Parsons, Paul Rathburn, Deacon Reed, Mohammed Hamza Regragui, Angelo Renardo, Jason Rickwood, Terry Rigarlsford, Rafael Sanz, Amanda See, Anthony Sergio, Michael C. Smith, Victor H. Soto, L. La Mar Stewart, Jackie Swanson, Victoria Swanson, Justin Thaler, Jennifer Tunberg, David Weber

Thanks

Cynthia Minnick, Vicente C. Ogilvie

Genres

Drama, Thriller

Companies

Warner Bros., Participant, Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ

Countries

United Arab Emirates, USA

Languages

English, Mandarin, Cantonese

ContentRating

PG-13

ImDbRating

6.8

ImDb Rating Votes

303109

Metacritic Rating

70

Short Description

Contagion is a 2011 American medical thriller film directed by Steven Soderbergh. Its ensemble cast includes Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Elliott Gould, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Bryan Cranston, Jennifer Ehle, Sanaa Lathan, and Marion Cotillard. The plot concerns the spread of a highly contagious virus transmitted by respiratory droplets and fomites, attempts by medical researchers and public health officials to identify and contain the disease, the loss of social order as the virus turns into a worldwide pandemic, and the introduction of a vaccine to halt its spread. To follow several interacting plot lines, the film makes use of the multi-narrative hyperlink cinema style, popularized in several of Soderbergh s films.

Following their collaboration on The Informant! (2009), Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns discussed a film depicting the rapid spread of a virus. Burns consulted with representatives of the World Health Organization as well as medical experts such as W. Ian Lipkin and Larry Brilliant. Principal photography started in Hong Kong in September 2010, and continued in Chicago, Atlanta, London, Dublin, Geneva, and San Francisco Bay Area until February 2011.

Contagion premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival in Venice, Italy on September 3, 2011, and was theatrically released on September 9, 2011. Commercially, the film made $136.5 million against its $60 million production budget. Critics praised it for its narrative and the performances, as did scientists for its accuracy. The film received renewed popularity in 2020 due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Box Office Budget

$60,000,000 (estimated)

Box Office Opening Weekend USA

$22,403,596

Box Office Gross USA

$75,658,097

Box Office Cumulative Worldwide Gross

$136,515,867

Keywords

Virus,infection,contagion,epidemic,vaccine