Is ‘Contagion’ Heading For Television?

Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Contagion‘ was one of the surprise hits of 2011, riding its terrifying concept and all-star cast to a $140 million international gross. Naturally, the first thought for Warner Bros. must have been “let’s make a sequel!” but it looks like Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns may be taking it in a different direction altogether. How about a TV show?

Coming Soon got the news straight from Burns himself, who has been doing press for ‘Side Effects‘ (which is his third collaboration with Soderbergh):

“We’ve been talking about turning it into a TV series and I think it may have a life there…It has some of the properties inherently like ‘Homeland’ and ’24′ where you can really explore outbreaks and pandemics in interesting ways.”

You can find more details/Burns-spitballing-thematic-ideas at the link above, but that’s the basic gist of it. And it’s a darn good idea.

Although there’s no way that a TV version of ‘Contagion’ would be able to wrangle up the likes of Matt Damon, Jude Law and Kate Winslet, the real star here is the concept. If watching a team of researchers and scientists attempting to save the world from a deadly virus was thrilling for two hours, the tension could become unbearable (AKA, awesome) at thirteen hours. The best parts of ‘Contagion’ involved watching smart people solve hard problems and a TV series would allow us to get to know and love these smart people as they solved those hard problems.

We don’t know how much of a possibility a ‘Contagion’ TV series really is, but we’re already on board. How about you, HBO or Showtime?

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