Steven Soderbergh is a man who always seems to have at least five projects on the go, and half the time it seems like we don’t even know what he’s working on until it suddenly shows up in theatres. We do know that right now he’s in the midst of shooting Knockout, a spy thriller starring Gina Carano, but his next project has yet to be nailed down. Last we heard, he was prepping a Liberace biopic starring Michael Douglas, but now this week there are reports that he has decided to put that on the back burner in favour of an action thriller about a virus outbreak called Contagion.

According to The Playlist, Soderbergh and The Bourne Ultimatum writer Scott Z. Burns came up with the idea while working on The Informant! together, and Burns went off and wrote a script that was so good that Soderbergh just had to get it fast-tracked immediately. It is being described as Bourne meets Outbreak meets Traffic, with a “terrifying” storyline that spans four continents. Here’s the kicker: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Marion Cotillard are all in final discussions to star.

I loved Outbreak in spite of its cheesy elements (admittedly, I haven’t seen it in years), and given the talent involved, it sounds like this could be a pretty fantastic flick. It has definitely jumped right up near the top of my most anticipated list. They’re reportedly aiming to shoot it in the fall, but with the speed at which Soderbergh works, could there be a chance that we’ll see it by the end of the year? Let’s hope so.

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