Honestly, I thought most of you would be dead by now. Wasn’t the H1N1 flu supposed to be a world-breaker? Weren’t we supposed to be reliving the Spanish Influenza of 1917? The pandemic from hell? What happened?

Oh well, I guess it’s for the best. I likely wouldn’t have made it myself (I’ve had a bitch of a persistent cough ever since Sundance three years ago. What the fuck is up with that bullshit? Anyway, it would have left me susceptible to H1N1 like mad), and that means I wouldn’t have lived to see Soderbergh putting together his next movie, Contagion. A multi-storyline plague outbreak film (think Traffic meets The Hot Zone), Contagion could be Soderbergh’s most commercial, biggest mainstream movie since the Ocean’s films. It already has Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard and Jude ‘Box Office Poison’ Law, and now it’s adding Gwyneth Paltrow.

There’s no word on what Paltrow will be playing (or for that matter what anyone will be playing), but the only role I’m ruling out is that of the virus itself. Unless she plays the voice over for the virus, where we learn that it doesn’t want to wipe out humanity, it’s just looking to take care of its ten billion offspring/clones of itself.

via Deadline Hollywood