Steven Soderbergh has had one of the most enviably cool careers in Hollywood. Since the Atlanta-born director burst onto the scene with Sex, Lies, and Videotape in 1989, he has managed to sustain an indie sensibility in his approach to filmmaking while also attaching huge stars to his projects. In 2011, Soderbergh, along with writer Scott Z. Burns, created the eerily prophetic film Contagion
, which stars Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, and Gwyneth Paltrow. In a recent interview with Variety, Soderbergh talked about the status of a possible sequel in the post-Covid spread world and working with Burns again:
“We’ve talked about it. It would have to be about something new, but also something that’s plausible. Part of the reason people were able to find resonance in that movie when it opened, and then 10 years later when the pandemic happened, was it was rooted in reality. We’ve got to find a new gimmick, but it’s got to be something that people go, ‘Oh, that could happen.'”
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Contagion is about a worldwide pandemic that starts in China and originates from a pig and bat-borne illness through contaminated food and then passes to humans who spread it through respiratory droplets. After the disease goes wide, millions die, conspiracy theorists spread false cures, and governments race to control infections and clamor for a vaccine. Sound familiar? The challenge Soderbergh sees in a sequel is how to make it something new, novel, and exigent in our current time. He went on to say:
“It would need to be something that’s going on right now that just needs a tiny little shove to turn into a huge thing. To me, “Contagion” was a horror movie. So the trick would be, can you find something as scary that’s real? There’s certainly a case to be made, especially in the West, for the long-term effects, environmentally, of what we eat, what we breathe. As is well known, we have plastic in our blood now. It’s in our brains. This is a new thing that’s got to have a pretty serious effect. There’s lots of possibilities.”
Soderbergh Is the King of Cool
The secret sauce in Soderbergh’s technique might be his ability to know when he’s making a movie and when he’s making a film. And to be clear, he can do both very well. The self-awareness in his craft allows him to follow the fun in his movies and the message in his films and gives him the ability to jump between genres seamlessly. From horror movies like Contagion to working-class justice dramas like Erin Brockovich to his new spy thriller Black Bag, which is already getting good buzz and hanging at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, Soderbergh finds the core interest and intrigue in the stories he tells, so a Contagion sequel would undoubtedly be a surprising adventure.
Black Bag is Soderbergh’s latest movie and is coming to theaters March 14th from Focus Features and Universal Pictures.
Sources: Variety
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