Hollywood action thriller Contagion, which is partially set in Abu Dhabi, will release in the US on Friday, Sept 9. The movie is the latest blockbuster to be financed by film fund Imagenation Abu Dhabi.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, who previously worked on Erin Brockovich and Ocean’s Eleven, the film includes a star-studded cast, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law and Kate Winslet.
Contagion tells the story of a lethal airborne virus and a worldwide group of doctors who race to find a cure and prevent a global pandemic.
Debuting in the US on Friday September 9, the $60m film was produced in partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures, Participant Media, Double Feature Films and Imagenation Abu Dhabi, the film fund based in the UAE capital.
While the film is set in a number of cities around the world and features scenes set in Abu Dhabi, none of the actual filming took place in UAE.
Previous films that Imagenation has financed include Furry Vengeance in 2010, starring Brendan Fraser; The Beaver in 2011 starring Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster; and the sequel to Ghost Rider, which is due out in 2012 and stars Nicolas Cage.
Imagenation has also snapped up the rights to the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in order to turn it into a big screen drama. The fund has teamed up with Summit, the studio behind ‘Twilight’, and Participant Media to dramatise the moments leading up to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
As well as financing large international films, Imagenation in July signed an agreement with Empire International to distribute locally produced movies to theatres and on DVD throughout the MENA region.
The agreement will begin with the distribution of its first two local film productions – the coming-of-age story, Sea Shadow, directed by acclaimed Emirati film director Nawaf Al Janahi (The Circle), and the Arabian horror thriller, Djinn, directed by horror genre master Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Poltergeist).
The partnership will give Empire the exclusive rights to distribute Imagenation Abu Dhabi’s local films across the wider Middle East and North Africa, including in the UAE, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, West Bank and Gaza, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, Algeria, and Iran.
Both Sea Shadow and Djinn are currently in post-production having completed principal photography in the UAE.
Release dates for both films are yet to be announced.
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