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How's this for timing?

As the planet deals with the spread of the coronavirus, now infecting more than 105,000 people in over 80 countries with over 3,600 succumbing to the potentially deadly virus since the start of January (as of March 8), a film depicting the Hollywood big budget version of the lengths some might go to contain such a pandemic is celebrating 25 years since first scaring the pants off audiences.

On March 10, 1995, Outbreak arrived in theaters, pitting heroes Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo against the spread of a fictional, Ebola-like virus known as Motaba, brought to America by an African monkey, and villainous military leaders played by Donald Sutherland and Morgan Freeman. The film, directed by Wolfgang Petersen, was a smash hit. It also wasn't exactly the most accurate thing out there.

Unlike Stephen Soderbergh's 2011 hit Contagion, which more closely resembles the situation we all find ourselves in currently (albeit amped up to the nth dramatic degree), Outbreak was deemed by disease expert and ecologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Brian Amman to be the least accurate portrayal of disease outbreak in modern film and TV.

"This one has so many flaws," he told Wired in October. "It's total chaos. It's a mess. It's pure Hollywood fiction."

(And if you're panicked that anything you've seen in films from Outbreak to Contagion might happen with COVID-19, Amman had this to say: "Viruses that you've seen in these clips are basically Hollywood fiction, and the real-life viruses that are out there are hardly ever, if at all, as fast-acting as what you've just seen in these clips.")

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