Successful films are a dime a dozen, as every weekend box-office report will tell you. Very few of them, however, manage to strike a chord years after their initial release, a feat pulled off by Steven Soderbergh's 2011 thriller "Contagion," which boasts an all-star cast, including Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kate Winslet. A nerve-shredding watch even upon initial release, the film focuses on the arrival of a virus and the desperate attempt by various parties to contain it — and it gained new attention during the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2020, it climbed to iTunes' top 10 most popular movies (via Insider). By this point, though, the film had already come back to Winslet's radar, who revealed on "The Graham Norton Show" in February 2021 that she is still in contact with the film's writer, Scott Z. Burns, who advised her on the correct precautions. "He was messaging me, saying, 'It's coming. Masks everywhere,'" she shared. "Me and my family, we were definitely wearing our masks for quite a long time before I think a lot of other people were."
