To hear anyone say that a pandemic was a case of ‘when’ instead of ‘if’ is enough to make a lot of people see tinges of red around their vision since the whole idea that someone might have expected something like this to come and didn’t say one single thing is infuriating. But then again, without knowing exactly what would be coming there’s a lot of room to backpedal if the experts had been wrong. With that being said though, a ‘spiritual sequel’ to Contagion, a 2011 movie that dealt with a worldwide pandemic of epic proportions, might be getting another movie that won’t necessarily connect to it but will revisit the idea of a vicious pandemic that will be wreaking havoc on the general populace. How this pandemic will be delivered is hard to say at the moment since there aren’t a lot of solid details that have been given just yet, but people that have survived 2020 might be groaning right about now since after getting through this year they might not want to be reminded of the pandemic any longer. It could be that people are going to watch the movie for the entertainment value, but thinking that it could be a little too real might be fair since the effects of COVID-19 have been rather hard to move past and the fallout is still being felt.
Steven Soderbergh had this to say via MovieWeb:
“I’ve got a project in development that Scott Burns is working with me on, that’s a kind of philosophical sequel to ‘Contagion,’ but in a different context. You’ll kind of look at the two of them as kind of paired, but very different hair colors. So, Scott and I had been talking about, ‘So, what’s the next iteration of a ‘Contagion’-type story?’ We have been working on that; we should probably hot-foot it a little bit.”
Just a regular ray of sunshine isn’t it? The ‘next iteration’ of a movie that likely frightened the hell out of a good number of people being released to a bunch of people that are already living with that fright in the current period sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it could be that people might have calmed down by the time the movie hits since it could be a while. As of right now, it does feel as though people might be divided when it comes to whether or not they’d be willing to see another pandemic movie arrive, as some might think nothing of it, while some might have plenty to say. The realism behind the movie, as it was with Contagion, might be an issue for some people simply due to the fact that the times we currently live in are so insanely uncertain when it comes to illness and what symptoms indicate that a person is genuinely sick or has allergies or something less frightening.
The downside of releasing a ‘spiritual sequel’, meaning something that’s not connected but is moving along the same kind of storyline, could be an issue since it does sound too much like the first movie, and it does sound as though people could label it as highly insensitive if things aren’t researched and presented in a manner that people can get behind. Obviously, people are a little too picky anyway and might find something to talk about no matter how expertly this movie is crafted, but at the very least it’s worth fretting over since people are on edge these days when it comes to the pandemic and just about any illness, and treating them to another movie that’s bound to remind them just how hopeless life can be is a prospect that should by all rights make a lot of directors at least a little anxious. It already sounds as though Soderbergh is attempting to find the best way to approach this movie, which says that he’s using some sense of caution instead of just charging forward with an idea without thinking about it first. Whatever form this movie takes it’s hopefully going to be something that will have benefited from a second and third look to make certain that it’s not going to be something that people will be looking at with dread as they try to point out the several real-life situations that could possibly happen if things went the wrong way.
With the way this year has gone it’s amazing that anyone wants to even discuss another movie like Contagion, but the responsibility of entertainers, from actors to directors to writers, is to take the world we live in and find a way to make it entertaining for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to give people an escape from the world and their problems for a short amount of time.
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