The number of people watching a 2011 film about a deadly global pandemic has increased dramatically in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
Contagion, the Steven Soderbergh–directed film starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Kate Winslet, is currently sat at number 10 in Apple’s iTunes store.
According to Buzzfeed News, it was the fifteenth most-rented film on January 29 on iTunes. One year ago, it wasn’t even in the top 100.
The film’s producer, Michael Shamberg, told Buzzfeed News in a new interview that it “was very deliberately designed to be a cautionary film”. He went on to mention the many experts the production team consulted on the movie, saying: “We got the science right.”
A spokesperson for Warner Bros., the film’s distributor, also told the publication that Contagion is also scoring high in viewing figures on other streaming platforms including Google Play (number 21). It’s currently trending on Amazon.
Additionally, across the entire collection of titles in the Warner Bros. catalogue (i.e. films not considered new releases), Contagion was the 270th most-watched Warner Bros. film in December. It’s the second most-watched movie in 2020.
Google Trends also shows that online searches pertaining to the film have also spiked since late January.