Outbreak (film)
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, Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland, and co-stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Spacey and Patrick Dempsey.
This article is about the 1995 feature film. For the 1995 telefilm based on the Robin Cook novel "Outbreak", see Virus (1995 film).Outbreak
- Gail Katz
- Arnold Kopelson
- Wolfgang Petersen
- Arnold Kopelson Productions
- Punch Productions, inc.
- March 10, 1995
128 minutes
United States
English
$50 million
$189.8 million
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. 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.[1] The film's popularity resurged during the COVID-19 pandemic, ranking as the fourth most streamed film in the United States on Netflix, March 13, 2020.[2]
Production[edit]
Scenes in "Cedar Creek" were filmed in Ferndale, California, where tanks and helicopters were a common feature of daily life during nearly two months of filming.[3] Other locations used were Dugway Proving Ground and Kauai.[4]
Harrison Ford was offered the role of Sam Daniels, but turned it down.[5] Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson were also offered the role, but turned it down.[6]
Producer Lynda Obst has stated it was due to the production of Outbreak that her film adaptation of The Hot Zone was dropped by 20th Century Fox, despite having, in her words, "the better package and ... the better script". She also claimed that director Wolfgang Petersen tried to entice Robert Redford, who was already cast for her film, to be a part of Outbreak, based on Redford's call to her. Obst would eventually have her adaptation of the book, but greenlit as a miniseries by National Geographic, which premiered in May 2019.[7]
Release[edit]
Box office[edit]
Outbreak was a commercial success.[8] It topped the U.S. box-office list its opening weekend with a gross of $13.4 million,[9] and spent three weeks at number one before Tommy Boy's release.[10] It was number one in Japan for six weeks.[11] The film grossed $67.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $122.2 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $189.9 million.[12]
Critical reception[edit]
Outbreak received mixed reviews from critics. According to the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 59% of 64 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.7 out of 10. The website's consensus states: "A frustratingly uneven all-star disaster drama, Outbreak ultimately proves only mildly contagious and leaves few lasting side effects."[13] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 21 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[14] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on a scale of A+ to F scale.[15]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it three and a half stars of four, calling Outbreak's premise "one of the great scare stories of our time, the notion that deep in the uncharted rain forests, deadly diseases are lurking, and if they ever escape their jungle homes and enter the human bloodstream, there will be a new plague the likes of which we have never seen."[16]
Rita Kempley of The Washington Post also enjoyed the film's plot: "Outbreak is an absolute hoot thanks primarily to director Wolfgang Petersen's rabid pacing and the great care he brings to setting up the story and its probability."[17]
David Denby wrote for New York magazine that although the opening scenes were well-done, "somewhere in the middle ... Outbreak falls off a cliff" and becomes "lamely conventional".[18]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times found the film's subject compelling, but its treatment ineffective: "The film's shallowness also contributes to the impression that no problem is too thorny to be solved by movie heroics."[19]