The world according to Dan.

How the movie ‘Contagion’ perfectly predicted the 2020 coronavirus crisis

The COVID-19 crisis caught a lot of people flat-footed — including an alarming number of people in government — but to anyone who’s seen “Contagion,” this all seems a bit like deja vu.

The drama, which hit theaters in 2011, is about a regular family man (Matt Damon) trying to navigate a partial societal collapse after a deadly virus sweeps across the globe. As of Friday, it was the third most popular movie on iTunes — and the only film in the top 10 that didn’t come out in 2019.

The filmmakers, including director Steven Soderbergh and writer Scott Burns, set out to make a film that was as realistic as possible. And they accomplished that, in part, by consulting numerous real-life epidemiological experts.

“Their goal was to try and really show people as accurate a picture that could be conjured, in hopes that it would motivate political leaders to get mobilized,” says Laurie Garrett, one of those health experts consulted by the filmmakers.

Garrett is a former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations who has been tracking outbreaks for decades. She published the bestselling book “The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance” in 1994.

In early versions of the film script, the bug was going to be related to the flu virus that killed millions in 1918. But then a virus from the same subtype — H1N1 — known as the “swine flu” hit in 2009, luckily with limited casualties.

“It wasn’t a super virulent strain,” Garrett says. “It made no sense to use that because humanity had just gone through it.”

So the script was rewritten to focus on a hypothetical virus that originated in Hong Kong, designed with the help of Ian Lipkin, the director of Columbia’s Center for Infection and Immunity.

“We’ve generally seen a lot [of diseases] arising out of Asia because of the tremendous disruption in that part of the world,” Garrett says. “Bats and birds are deeply stressed because of deforestation and climate change.”

In “Contagion,” a bat drops a piece of a fruit, which is eaten by a pig. That pig is then slaughtered for consumption, passing on a virus to humans.

Scientists believe that the coronavirus, which has infected nearly 300,000 people worldwide and claimed over 11,000 lives, may also have come from bats.

“Bats have a high index of viruses in their saliva,” Garrett says.

None of these viruses harm the bats themselves, serving as a defense mechanism to ward off predators.

One of the reasons “Contagion” feels so prescient is because of its myriad subplots, each representative of events and behaviors that Garrett says almost always come with a pandemic. “Contagion” not only gives an illuminating glimpse into what happened — but what might.

“I’ve been in more than 30 epidemics, and the same things happen over and over again,” Garrett says.

“We always get scumbags off the Internet claiming to have a cure,” the author adds.

In the film, Jude Law plays an unscrupulous blogger who asserts forsythia, a flowering plant, can kill the virus. In real life, we have Alex Jones and Jim Bakker peddling supposed elixirs on TV.

The movie also nails the range of psychological reactions that come during an outbreak.

None of these viruses harm the bats themselves, serving as a defense mechanism to ward off predators.

One of the reasons “Contagion” feels so prescient is because of its myriad subplots, each representative of events and behaviors that Garrett says almost always come with a pandemic. “Contagion” not only gives an illuminating glimpse into what happened — but what might.

“I’ve been in more than 30 epidemics, and the same things happen over and over again,” Garrett says.

“We always get scumbags off the Internet claiming to have a cure,” the author adds.

In the film, Jude Law plays an unscrupulous blogger who asserts forsythia, a flowering plant, can kill the virus. In real life, we have Alex Jones and Jim Bakker peddling supposed elixirs on TV.

The movie also nails the range of psychological reactions that come during an outbreak.

For another, “cancel all your travel plans. You’re not going anywhere,” Garrett says. If you have an out-of-town relative you’d like to be near, go “there today or tomorrow, because pretty soon you’re not going to have [the option].”

But on an uplifting note, “Contagion” does offer one final, all-important message, Garrett says:

“Society is better off in a plague when everyone works together and cares for one another and tries to muddle through a nightmare.”

How ‘Contagion’ Suddenly Became the Most Urgent Movie of 2020

It starts with a cough. You’ve heard the sound a million times before, in the same way you’ve seen people grip a subway pole, hand over a credit card, pass someone else their phone a million times before. Only this slightly hoarse, barking noise plays out over a black screen, it’s currently the sole object of your focus, and vaguely ominous. Oh wait, no worries, it’s coming from Gwyneth Paltrow. There she is, sitting in an airport, talking to someone on her cell (the voice on the other end belongs to director Steven Soderbergh), telling them that she’s glad they connected before she heads home. Just an Oscar winner chatting about an illicit tryst while eating beer nuts from a bowl at the bar. All good.

She does seem a tad pale and sweaty, however. So, for that matter, does that Ukrainian model in London, that Tokyo-based businessman, and the man on the train in Kowloon. He’s got a fairly nasty cough as well. You start to notice all of the tiny interactions they have with other people: hugging loved ones, nestling themselves into crowded elevators, using public transit, walking through an open-air fish market. They’re so innocuous, you’d hardly register them at all. Later on, however, you remember all of the little everyday points of contact with folks they have. You also recall the population numbers of the cities they are all in, stats which accompany those introductory scenes and number in the millions. The death toll will be substantial. Time is already running out.

This is how Contagion starts, not with a bang but with a whimper, and the future Goop founder hacking up a lung. If you saw Soderbergh’s all-star disaster movie when it came out back in 2011, you’d have recognized it as a particularly intense type of entertainment. You wouldn’t call it escapism — it’s a bit too bleak for that. But there’s a momentum to it that you associate with a night at the multiplex, with movie stars looking tense and thoughtful while their crusty-mouthed co-stars drift about in cadaverous makeup. Soderbergh knows how to shoot a thriller. Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns knows how to construct one. Cliff Martinez’s synth score couldn’t be more propulsive or more perfectly John Carpenter-esque. It’s a movie that never stops moving.

But while there are lots of films about battling viruses, ranging from the prestigious to the pulpy, Contagion has become the go-to viewing choice for people trying to make sense of the moment we find ourselves in right now. Back in January, The Hollywood Reporter noted that the almost-decade-old drama was the 10th-most-rented movie on iTunes. Go to the service’s charts right now, the day after a handful of major cities declared a state of emergency, and it’s currently in the No. 4 slot. (Should you open up the iTunes app on your laptop or your Apple TV, you’ll notice it’s listed as second in rentals, just behind Bombshell.) Speaking to Slate a few days ago, Burns noted that “whether on social media or in conversations with friends … people will say to me, ‘This is uncanny how similar it is.’” By “it,” he’s not talking about the film’s fictional virus MEV-1, which has a 72-hour incubation period and a much higher fatality rate than the present predictions regarding the coronavirus. He’s talking about the sense of watching things fall apart as everyday life grinds to a halt. Listen to experts talking about fomites and hand-washing techniques on TV — not the monitors framed in the film, but on real-life TV — and it’s as if you have stepped through the looking glass.

Contagion has, perhaps a little surprisingly, become the flashback film of the moment precisely because it’s not an outrageous worst-case scenario but an eerily realistic one. When a notable actor dies very early on, said A-lister does not return from the dead, arms outstretched and craving the taste of brains. Aliens are not responsible for the virus attacking humans; nor, for that matter, is it the result of foreign agents disrupting the American way of life, despite what fearmongers on a particular conservative news network would have you believe. What may be the single most chilling aspect of Soderbergh and Burns’ heavily researched scenario is how random the MEV-1’s creation is. “The wrong pig met up with the wrong bat,” a scientist notes after the genetic makeup of the virus is discovered. It’s almost a throwaway statement, until you get to the end and the film shows you exactly how “Day 1” played out. A bat happens to defecate in a pig pen. A little porcine fellow happens to consume it. He’s brought to a casino in Macao to be prepared for someone’s dinner; the chef happens to shake the hand of a visiting businesswoman. She happens to blow on the dice of the businessman playing next to her at a craps table. All it takes is the right series of wrong moves.

It’s everything that happens after that narratively/before that scene chronologically, however, that has likely made Contagion the single most urgent movie of the moment, and thus the most (re)viewed. It’s a disaster movie, but it’s also a pandemic procedural, one devoted to charting the how, when, where, why — and most important, what happens next. The film’s CDC and WHO representatives are competent, intelligent, and organized; they have mobilized to the best of their collective abilities. Kate Winslet’s doctor puts her life on the line; a San Francisco medical professional (played by Elliot Gould) does defy direct orders to destroy his samples but ends up uncovering a key piece of the puzzle. The Centers for Disease Control researcher who first charts the when-bat-meets-pig origins ends up testing a vaccine on herself, willfully ignoring protocol … but voila, she now proves there’s a workable vaccine. For every scene involving blogger Jude Law cashing in on the chaos or Matt Damon’s dad staving off people in the throws of extreme prepare-anoia, there are several sequences in which our better angels are on display, and there’s a sense that there are actually adults in the room.

And that last bit in particular is something we really aren’t getting right now when we hear about travel bans in lieu of testing, delayed responses instead of determination to make up for lost time, past leaders being defensively blamed rather than current ones acting with accountability. In that sense, maybe Contagion really is escapism. Despite the gruesome scenes of people dying and overall sense that society is just one viral video away from sheer anarchy, it’s a hopeful movie. Trust in scientists, and the innate decency in people, and we will prevail. Things fall apart, and then you put them back together again. Use common sense. Pray to your respective gods but also, y’know, wash your hands. It will get bad, the movie tells us. But it will also get better. People are probably flocking to this movie to see what may be in store for us in the next month or so. That last bit of optimism it offers us couldn’t have come at a better time.

Onward retains top spot at the box office, amidst record lows due to coronavirus concerns

Onward has retained its top spot at the box office during its second week in theaters with $10.5 million, during a weekend that marked the lowest theatergoing turnout in over two decades.

The animated Pixar film took a major hit as the coronavirus pandemic continues to sweep the globe, with major events and film releases being canceled or pushed back. On Friday, AMC Theaters and Regal announced it would be reducing the amount of tickets available for screenings by 50 percent as part of an effort to promote “social distancing.”

“This was predestined to be a very low grossing weekend at the box office with social distancing protocols seeing movie theaters appropriately taking steps to ensure the safety and health of their patrons and employees while still presenting movies to consumers who had the desire to partake in the escape that the movie theater experience has traditionally provided,” said Paul Dergarabedian, Senior Media Analyst for Comscore.

Following Onward in second place is I Still Believe with $9.5 million and Bloodshot $9.3 million — both new entries this weekend. Rounding out the top five are The Invisible Man ($6 million) and The Hunt ($5.3 million).

I Still Believe tells the real-life story of Christan music superstar Jeremy Camp (K.J. Apa) and his journey through love and loss while also finding his way in the music industry. Britt Robertson portrays Camp’s first wife Melissa Lynn Henning-Camp (Britt Robertson), who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer before they were married. Gary Sinise and Shania Twain play Camp’s parents, Tom and Terry, respectively. Moviegoers gave the film an A via Cinemascore.

F9 may have been delayed but Vin Diesel is in theaters right now in the film Bloodshot, based on the best selling comic book of the same name. Diesel stars as Ray Garrison, a marine who was killed in action then resurrected with superpowers by an evil corporation.

With Garrison, now known as the superhero Bloodshot, the RST corporation has an unstoppable weapon on their hands that can heal instantly. But they’re also controlling his mind, and he can’t tell what’s real and what’s not but he’s trying to figure it out. The David S.F. Wilson film co-stars Eiza Gonzalez, Guy Pearce, Sam Heughan, and Toby Kebbell.

EW gave the film a C+ saying, “it’s a lot of bog-standard action stuff glommed onto a deeper metaphysical muddle; Inception drawn in extra-thick Sharpie and testosterone.” Moviegoers liked it a bit more, giving it a B via Cinemascore.

Blumhouse Productions finally dropped the long-delayed satirical thriller The Hunt, starring Betty Gilpin, Ike Barinholtz, Emma Roberts, and Hilary Swank. The film follows 12 strangers who wake up mysteriously in a clearing, unsure how they got there or where they are. They soon discover they’ve been chosen to be hunted in a game created by a group of elites, but not all of the players are willing to be pawns.

EW gave the film a B+ saying, “The big disappointment with The Hunt is that it never feels so ahead of the curve. It’s a complicated form of 2016 catharsis, condemning recognizable pastiches of the left and the right. And yet, there’s a playful terror in its portrayal of people getting trapped by silly things they type.” Cinemascore reports moviegoers gave the film a C+.

Overall, the box office is down 8.7 percent year-to-date, according to Comscore. Check out the March 13-15 numbers below:

Onward— $10.5 million
I Still Believe— $9.5 million
Bloodshot— $9.3 million
The Invisible Man—$6 million
The Hunt— $5.3 million
Sonic the Hedgehog — $2.6 million
The Way Back—$2.4 million
The Call of the Wild—$2.2 million
Emma —$1.4 million
Bad Boy for Life — $1.1 million

‘Onward’ leads weak box office; Affleck’s ‘The Way Back’ stumbles into 3rd

LOS ANGELES — Disney and Pixar’s Onward debuted this weekend to US$40 million, enough to lead box office charts but still a somewhat disappointing start given the studio’s near-flawless track record when it comes to animated fare. Internationally, the film brought in $28 million for a global tally of $68 million.

Onward, a fantastical adventure about two brothers (voiced by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt), ranks among Pixar’s lowest opening weekend’s in modern times, joining 2015’s The Good Dinosaur and its $39 million as a rare blemish for the Disney-owned company, known for producing hits such as Inside Out, Coco and Up. Pixar films typically cost $175 million to $200 million to produce, a huge sum that doesn’t include global marketing fees.

Directed by Dan Scanlon, Onward received mostly positive reviews, though it didn’t welcome the kind of rapturous reception that greets most Pixar titles. Still, Onward looks to benefit in coming weeks as one of the few options for family audiences. It scored an “A-” CinemaScore, signaling that moviegoers enjoyed the film.

“Pixar has earned an incredible reputation for delivering quality to audiences, and based on their response, they are being touched by it,” said Cathleen Taff, Disney’s president of global distribution. “We’re excited to see such good word-of-mouth. That bodes well for the life of its run in theatres.”

This weekend’s other high-profile release, Warner Bros.’ sports drama The Way Back, also fell short of expectations. But box office experts suggest it was the movies themselves — not fears of coronavirus — that stifled ticket sales. Onward was tracking an opening between $40 million and $45 million even before threats of coronavirus in North America.

“I think there was zero impact,” Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst with Comscore, said. “With $40 million for Onward, a small drop off for The Invisible Man and The Way Back getting solid scores from audiences, it looks like people are in the habit of going to the movies.”

Overall box office receipts are down 50% from the same weekend last year, an inevitable dip given last year saw Captain Marvel arrive with a huge $153 million. That drastic dip pushed the year-to-date box office down almost 2%, the first year-over-year decline in 2020.

The Way Back brought in $8.5 million when it launched in 2,718 theatres, enough for third place on box office charts. It’s a lacklustre start given its A-list leading man, but an improvement from Warner Bros. recent mid-budget duds, such as The Good Liar ($5.6 million) and The Kitchen ($5.5 million).

The film, which cost roughly $21 million to make, was poised as a big-screen comeback for Affleck. His performance as an alcoholic construction worker who is recruited to become the head coach of a high school basketball team has been praised, but it didn’t get the level of reception that smaller dramas need these days to make an impact at the box office. Among opening weekend crowds, 64% were over the age of 35. Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros.’ president of domestic distribution, noted it’s a demographic that doesn’t usually rush out on opening weekend.

“Our reviews were really strong and we have a ‘B+’ CinemaScore, so we’re in a really strong place,” Goldstein said. “The story gears toward an older audience that doesn’t rush out. I think we can capture an older audience, assuming a coronavirus scare doesn’t keep audiences away.”

In second place, Universal and Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man added $15.5 million in its second outing for a cumulative total of $52.6 million. Internationally, the Elisabeth Moss-led thriller generated $17.3 million. Its box office receipts currently stand at $98.3 million, already a win for the studio since it cost just $7 million.

Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog landed at No. 4, bringing in another $8 million. After four weeks in theatres, the animated family film has made an impressive $140 million. The blue speed demon, voiced by Ben Schwartz, has also been a draw overseas, where it has made $154 million. Globally, Sonic is nearing the $300 million mark with ticket sales currently at $295.6 million.

Disney’s The Call of the Wild rounded out the top five, pocketing $7 million in its third frame. The adaptation of Jack London’s novel, starring Harrison Ford and a CGI dog named Buck, has generated $57.5 million in North America and $99.6 million worldwide, a weak result because the film cost a head-scratching $125 million to make. Given the high price tag, sources estimate “The Call of the Wild” needs to earn between $250 million and $275 million to get out of the red. At this point, it will be difficult to reach those heights so “The Call of the Wild” is expected to lose around $50 million.

Among indie releases, A24’s First Cow made $96,059 when it opened in four venues — translating to $24,015 from each location. Directed by Kelly Reichardt, the film is set in the Pacific Northwest and follows a 19th century cook who travels with fur trappers to the Oregon Territory. It will continue its platform release next weekend before opening nationwide in the spring.

Sony Pictures Classic’s Burnt Orange Heresy had a rocky start in limited release, bringing in $18,296 from four screens for a theatre-average of $4,574. The heist thriller stars Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debicki and Mick Jagger.

Elsewhere, Focus Features’ Emma amassed $5 million when it expanded to 1,565 theaters, bringing its domestic tally to $6.8 million. The adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel also earned $1.5 million this weekend at the international box office for a global bounty of $20.9 million.