"The question was never if, but when a pandemic would come"

57-year-old Steven Soderbergh worries about the cinema industry and how he wants to bring the Oscars to the stage.

Image: Keystone

Hardly any pandemic film comes as close to Corona reality as Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” from 2011. The director therefore led the task force that worked out the conditions for the resumption of film and TV productions. What’s next for Hollywood in 2021?

The American filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (“Ocean’s Eleven”, “Erin Brockovich”) released the film “Contagion” in 2011, in which a bat virus from Asia triggered a worldwide pandemic. The film became a Netflix hit last spring.

The Hollywood studios entrusted Soderbergh, who thanks to “Contagion” has friends in epidemiology circles, to head the task force that worked out a safe return for film and TV productions. With quarantine, regular tests, samples with masks, etc., filming could be resumed.

This year, Soderbergh will co-produce the Academy Awards with Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins. The 93rd edition of the Oscar is scheduled to take place on April 25, 2021. Steven Soderbergh was nominated twice for a Best Director’s Oscar in 2001: for “Erin Brockovich” and for “Traffic” – he won for “Traffic”. In 1990 his screenplay was nominated for his breakthrough film “Sex, Lies and Videotapes”.

Soderbergh’s latest film «Let Them All Talk» plays on the luxury steamer “Queen Mary 2”. Meryl Streep plays a successful author who invites her nephew (Lucas Hedges) and two childhood friends (Candice Bergen, Dianne Wiest) on the transatlantic crossing from New York to Southampton.

Mr. Soderbergh, does cinema still have a future?

Yes, of course, because for every film studio that still wants to be in business in five years’ time, the cinema has first priority. In 2019 it was a $ 11.5 billion business, and more than 40 billion were made internationally. The idea that studios no longer want to bring their films to theaters is ridiculous.

But the cinemas have long been closed and Warner Bros. plans to stream all films at the same time starting next year. Doesn’t that have long-term consequences, or do you see it differently?

The consequences that the studios are now drawing are necessary but not desired and relate to the economic reality of the next twelve months. The energy that we are currently wasting on debating “streaming instead of cinema” should better be invested elsewhere – namely in an aid package for the cinemas. So that they are still there when people are ready to go to the cinema again. Otherwise everyone should calm down a little now.

“Contagion”, with Jude Law among others, tells the story of a pandemic for which a cure is desperately sought.

Warner Bros.

With the 2011 thriller “Contagion” you practically anticipated the coronavirus pandemic. Were you surprised when your movie suddenly became a reality?

All of the film’s consultants told us at the time that such a pandemic is inevitable. They kept repeating that it was not a question of if, but when. So the corona pandemic was actually no surprise to me. However, scriptwriter Scott Burns and I couldn’t imagine how much society would argue about health measures. That the conspiracy theorist played by Jude Law would become the main character in reality was beyond the limits of our imagination.