1995 film directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Outbreak is a 1995 American medical disaster film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and written by Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool. The film stars Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman, and co-stars Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Spacey and Patrick Dempsey.
The film focuses on an outbreak of Motaba, a fictional ebolavirus- and orthomyxoviridae-like virus, in Zaire, and later in a small town in California. It is set primarily in the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the fictional town of Cedar Creek, California. Outbreak's plot speculates how far military and civilian agencies might go to contain the spread of a deadly, contagious disease.
The film, released by Warner Bros. on March 10, 1995, was a box-office success, and Spacey won two awards for his performance. A real-life outbreak of the Ebola virus was occurring in Zaire when the film was released. The film's popularity resurged during the COVID-19 pandemic, ranking as the fourth most streamed film in the United States on Netflix on March 13, 2020.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.