National Geographic has given a series order for a miniseries based on Richard Preston’s 1995 book The Hot Zone. The network made the announcement during this week’s upfront presentations, and it comes from Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions, Fox 21 Television Studios, and Lynda Obst Productions. It wasn't announced when the show would premiere or how many episodes it would run.
The Hot Zone is about the discovery of the Ebola virus in Africa in the 1970s and an outbreak that occurred in Reston, Virginia, in 1990 when a group of quarantined monkeys began to die of mysterious causes. Ebola is a virus thought to be transmitted to humans through contact with animals.
The virus is deadly; those who contract it experience fever, headaches, muscle pain, and diarrhoea. In some cases, they also experience internal and external bleeding.
The virus has often been seen in small outbreaks throughout central Africa — the most recent outbreak occurred in May 2017 — while a massive outbreak occurred between 2014 and 2016, killing over 11,000 people.
The Hot Zone will now join that lineup. Preston’s book is an ideal candidate for such treatment: it’s a dramatic story about a frightening virus, made all the more relevant by the recent memory of the 2014 outbreak, which saw infections appear throughout the world, including the United States.
What’s more, there’s the potential for follow-ups if this series is successful. In addition to The Hot Zone, Preston also wrote about smallpox, anthrax, and biological weapons in The Demon in the Freezer, and he is working on a book about the 2014 outbreak.
