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"It's a strange and upsetting coincidence that we all happen
to be experiencing this current scare, and we're of course
extremely sensitive about it," Executive Producer Lynda Obst,
who is developing the project with Fox TV Studios and "Alien"
director Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions, said in a
statement.
"While we are far from a finished product that, regardless,
would never air during this current news cycle, I do think
Preston's take is illuminating, particularly with some
distance," Obst said.
If the adaptation of Richard Preston's non-fiction thriller
about viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola makes it into
production, it will likely be as a limited-run series, Fox TV
Studios said. The book describes the discovery of a virus
related to Ebola in a primate quarantine facility in Reston,
Virginia in 1989.
The current Ebola outbreak has killed more than 4,500 people
since March, mostly in the three impoverished West African
countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the
World Health Organization.
Fears that the outbreak would spread outside of that region have
grown since a nurse in Spain became infected, a Liberian man
died Oct. 8 in Dallas, Texas and two of the nurses who treated
him were also diagnosed with the illness.
A series developed by Fox's TV studio also does not guarantee
that it would be broadcast on one of its parent company's
networks in the United States as it could be sold to another
network. Preston's book has become one of the best-selling books
on online retailer Amazon two decades after its initial release.
(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Grant
McCool)
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TV
adaptation of Ebola best-seller 'The Hot Zone' in the works
