Photo: Warner Bros

A while back, there was some chitchat about a sequel to Contagion, the 2011 Steven Soderbergh pandemic thriller. Now screenwriter Scott Z. Burns says that discussion has shifted its focus. “We’ve been talking about turning it into a TV series and I think it may have a life there,” Burns tells Coming Soon. “It has some of the properties inherently like Homeland and 24 where you can really explore outbreaks and pandemics in interesting ways.” Political thriller soaps are all the rage right now: In a post-Homeland world, we’ve got Scandal, House of Cards, and The Americans. There are also a handful of disaster/survival/apocalypse shows, like The Walking Dead, Revolution, and Falling Skies. So maybe it’s totally appropriate to think about a show somewhere in that mix — global politics meets global panic. But will Gwyneth Paltrow still die in the TV version?