Ridley Scott producing miniseries based on ebola outbreak

That didn’t take long. Filmmaker Ridley Scott is already getting ready to make a miniseries centered on an ebola outbreak.

Scott and co-producer Lynda Obst are working with Fox TV to develop a limited series based on The Hot Zone, the 1994 novel by Richard Preston. The book centers on the origins of an Ebola virus outbreak at a Washington, D.C. lab.

Scott and Obst have had the screen rights to the novel for two decades and already picked Jeff Vintar (I, Robot) to write. At one point, it was considered a Fox film project with Jodie Foster starring, but they have since decided to reformat it for television.

Preston is currently working on a new piece for the New Yorker, which will be published next week. The producing duo have already been working with Preston to update their property with the piece in mind.

Scott, who just finished Exodus: Gods and Kings, will direct at least one episode. Oct, Scott, David Zucker and Jim Hart will executive produce. After new developments are put into the screenplay, they will take it to networks.

“A limited series is a great way to do this because you don't have to limit it to a three-act structure like you do with a film,” Obst told THR.

Coincidentally, Steven Soderbergh directed a film about a virus outbreak in 2011, Contagion. Scott Z. Burns, who wrote the movie, recently spoke with TheWrap, blasting the TV networks for their overzealous coverage of the ebola crisis in the U.S.

“We have the science to contain this,” Burns told the site. “There are people in the world today who have stared down Ebola successfully in very difficult places – and I am optimistic that if we support those people and give them the resources they need, this can be contained.”

Scott’s Exodus opens on Dec. 12. Obst is a producer on Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, which opens in November.

image courtesy of Famous/ACE/INFphoto.com