Mega producers Ridley Scott and Lynda Obst are planning a new mini series together, based on Richard Preston's best-seller, The Hot Zone. The non-fiction book, published in 1994, chroncials the outbreak of viral hemorrhagic fevers, including the Ebola virus.

Ridley ScottProducer Ridley Scott

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series will be produced by Fox TV Studios, with a script being adapted by Jeff Vintar.

The project has been in Scott and Obst's hands for two decades, after they bought the rights to the book soon after publication, but the duo have only been working on the idea of series for the past year.

Of course Ebola is now back in the headlines after the current outbreak, which has been described as the deadliest manifestation of the disease to date.

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The Hot Zone's author Richard Preston is now working on a follow up piece to his 1992 article for the New Yorker, on which his book was based. It is thought that Scott and Obst will try and  work his latest writings on the disease into the series.

The series will aim to give a history of Ebola, including a 1989 incident in which primates at a quarantine facility in Virginia became infected with a mutated version of the disease.

Originally Obst and Scott had planned the project as a movie for 20th Century Fox which would star Jodie Foster.

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Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter Obst said, “I think it's the speed with which it kills that makes the disease so frightening. People hoped it would stay in some remote part of the world. But that's a fantasy in the modern world. The modern world makes us one big connected family."

The producer then added that she thought a limited series was "a great way to do this because you don't have to limit it to a three-act structure like you do with a film."

Obst is currently producing Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Interstellar, while Scott is working on the post production of  Exodus: Gods and Kings, starring Christian Bale.