There’s long been a kind of internal legend around Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion”: the version audiences saw in 2011 wasn’t just tightened—it was drastically reduced, with roughly 45 minutes cut from an earlier assembly. That’s an enormous amount of material to strip out of a film built as a multi-character mosaic, and part of what made those decisions so painful was how much they affected individual roles along the way. When The Playlist recently spoke to Soderbergh for his new film “The Christophers,” which opens this Friday, on April 10—read our review, more from that interview soon—he revealed that he had recently revisited that longer version and explained why it still doesn’t belong in the world.
“It’s funny,” Soderbergh recalled when asked about the longer ‘Contagion’ cut and whether it could ever spread back into the world. “[Editor] Corey Bayes, who works with me and is intimately involved in everything, especially in the edit, came to me a couple months ago and said, ‘Hey, we still have the ability to reconstruct the original cut and blend it with the new stuff. Do you want to look at that?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, let’s look at that.’”
At first, he admitted, the experience was energizing. Bayes had excavated all the old scenes, reentered them, and Soderbergh suddenly found himself staring at footage he barely recognized.
“It was wild to see stuff that I didn’t even remember we shot,” he said. “He had arranged it all in chronological order, and I got excited by the idea that maybe there was another version here.” For a while, he added, the possibilities seemed open. “Maybe you could put out a different cut, or make it, like, three one-hour episodes. I was open to anything, and I was really excited to watch it.”
That feeling faded the deeper he got into it. Ultimately, the longer version didn’t reveal some hidden alternate masterpiece. It only sharpened his sense that his original less-is-more instincts were correct.
“The further I got into it, the more I felt, no, that was the right call,” he explained. By the end, the only awkward part was having to deliver that verdict to Bayes after all the work he’d put into the reconstruction. “I texted Corey and said, ‘I hate to say this after all the work you did, but I think we made all the right calls.’”
Soderbergh did single out one deleted beat that still struck him as interesting on its own. In that scene, he said, Matt Damon’s character gets a very dark offer in the middle of the crisis. “At one point, Matt Damon is offered a million dollars for two pints of his blood because this tech company thinks they can make a serum for their high-value clients and make them immune,” he said. Still, he added, the scene couldn’t survive the larger rhythm of the movie. “That was a really interesting scene, but in terms of the flow of the movie, it had to go.”
That pretty much rules out an expanded edition as a curiosity item. For now, he doesn’t sound interested in releasing a longer cut for its own sake. “It would have to be doing something other than just showing you the shit that got cut,” he said.
Asked separately about a possible “Contagion 2,” Soderbergh made clear the conversation had happened before with screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, but whatever momentum the idea may have had seems to have cooled. “Scott and I kind of kicked some ideas around,” he said, before conceding the larger problem. “[But] it would be tough to go back to that idea for me because that was a really unique circumstance.”
To explain the hesitation, he reached for a line of old-school filmmaking wisdom. “David Lean talked about not popping out of the same hole twice,” Soderbergh said, while also acknowledging the irony of the statement. “I know I’m saying that as somebody who’s been involved with multiple ‘Oceans’ movies and multiple ‘Magic Mike’ movies,” he added. But this one still feels different to him. “I don’t know how to mitigate that feeling of, like, we’ve done it before,” he admitted.
For now, the longer cut remains unreleased, and Soderbergh still doesn’t sound persuaded there’s a way back into a sequel. Soderbergh’s next film, “The Christophers,” opens this week, and there’s more from that interview still to come.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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