The Ebola virus has claimed more than 4,000 people, and continues to wreak havoc across the globe. Hollywood already has jumped on the hysteria bandwagon with a new TV series.
Fox TV Studios is developing a limited series based on the 1994 best-selling book The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Producer Lynda Obst and director-producer Ridley Scott optioned the non-fiction thriller two decades ago and hired screenwriter Jeff Vintar to adapt it.
The story spans the history of the Ebola virus and the Marburg virus, both viral hemorrhagic fevers. It also details an 1989 incident at a primate quarantine facility in Reston, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., where many of the monkey subjects died from a relative of the Ebola virus.
The recent Ebola scare is the deadliest outbreak ever and has made the adaptation that much more relevant. Obst and Scott began work on the project early this year before the crisis heated up.
"I think it's the speed with which it kills that makes the disease so frightening," Obst told The Hollywood Reporter. "People hoped it would stay in some remote part of the world. But that's a fantasy in the modern world. The modern world makes us one big connected family."
The United States saw its first victim in Dallas last week. The male victim had flown in from Liberia, one of the most infected areas in West Africa, and two of the nurses on his case contracted the virus. They have been hospitalized, but one took a flight between Cleveland and Dallas causing panic in both regions.
Preston is writing a New Yorker piece about the current outbreak. The Hot Zone expanded in another New Yorker article the author wrote in 1992 called "Crisis in the Hot Zone." The TV show will adapt Preston's new article into its story.
Obst and Scott originally conceived the project as a feature film starring Jodie Foster. It will now air as a limited series and the producers will start pitching it to networks once the script incorporates Preston's latest article.
"A limited series is a great way to do this because you don't have to limit it to a three-act structure like you do with a film," Obst said.
