Outbreak (1995) on Netflix
A virus that emptied a village in Zaire reaches California in a smuggled monkey. Colonel Sam Daniels and his ex-wife Roberta Keough hunt the animal as Cedar Creek falls ill.
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb6.6/10147,139 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes60%
Trailer
Plot summary
Army officers Donald McClintock and William Ford have an infected camp in the African jungle bombed in 1967 to keep a deadly fever, Motaba, hidden. Twenty-eight years later, Colonel Sam Daniels of USAMRIID investigates an outbreak in Zaire that leaves a village almost empty; his superior, General Billy Ford, brushes aside his warnings. The virus reaches the United States in a white-faced capuchin monkey. A laboratory worker in California takes the animal and falls sick, and the illness also reaches a pet-shop owner and a hospital technician. Roberta Keough, Daniels's ex-wife, investigates the cases for the CDC. The virus spreads through Cedar Creek, California, and Daniels flies there against orders to join her team.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Outbreak (1995)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Lynda Obst has said it was the production of Outbreak that caused 20th Century Fox to drop her own adaptation of The Hot Zone, despite hers having, in her words, "the better package and ... the better script", and that director Wolfgang Petersen tried to entice Robert Redford, already cast in her film, over to Outbreak.
- Harrison Ford was offered the role of Sam Daniels, but turned it down. Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson were also offered the role, and turned it down as well.
- The film, released by Warner Bros. on March 10, 1995, was a box-office success, and a real-life outbreak of the Ebola virus was occurring in Zaire at the very time it reached cinemas.
- The film's popularity resurged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it ranked as the fourth-most-streamed film on Netflix in the United States on March 13, 2020.
- Implausibilities picked out in the film include the virus taking only an hour, rather than days, to multiply; the synthesis of the cure taking less than a minute, rather than many months; and the injection of the cure producing immediate improvement.
