The movie "Contagion" was released in 2011, but it's rising in popularity above films released this year.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, and more, "Contagion" is about a pandemic that threatens humanity. In recent weeks, it's raced up the iTunes charts and has increased in piracy because of the coronavirus, which has spread to at least 88 countries and killed more than 3,300 people. The current outbreak of coronavirus has many similarities with the story of the film, which was made almost a decade ago. In the film, a businesswoman (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) dies of a mysterious and deadly virus. She was infected with the virus during a visit to China. But until that time, no warnings about the virus were issued.
Viewers of “Contagion” say that the film has grown in popularity due to the similarity of the film's story with the current real-life virus outbreak.
The character, played by Paltrow, is infected with a virus called MEV-One by a Hong Kong chef who contracted it after slaughtering a pig. The pig was infected with the virus through a bat. Paltrow’s character returned to the country seriously ill, and died shortly afterwards.
Then her son died of the same disease. But the virus could not infect her husband, Matt Damon. On Friday, "Contagion" was the seventh most popular movie on iTunes. Every other movie in the top 20 was released in 2019. According to the piracy analytics company MUSO, "Contagion" increased from 546 visits to piracy streaming sites on January 7 to a whopping 30,418 visits on January 30, when coronavirus concerns had reached a high level.
"Although not an especially high number compared to the piracy numbers for blockbuster titles, the average daily visits for 'Contagion' increased by an astonishing 5,609% in January 2020 compared to December 2019," MUSO CEO Andy Chatterley wrote for Forbes.
Not all of the science of the movie is plausible. In 2011, after the movie's release, experts from the Centers for Disease Control shot down some of the movie's fictional scenarios for PBS NewsHour, including developing a vaccine so quickly.
But experts did say that the depiction of the movie's virus reaching humans through animal encounters is a likely scenario.