"The Hot Zone" is being fasttracked by 20th Century Fox, reports Variety
Fox have attached "The Deep End" filmmaking team of Scott McGehee and David Siegel to co-direct the viral thriller.
Fox originally acquired rights to "The Hot Zone" in 1993 and set it up for director Ridley Scott, Jodie Foster and Robert Redford.
But, following a well-documented series of setbacks, the pic, then titled "Crisis in the Hot Zone," was shut down in pre-production in 1994 after Foster and Redford bowed out while producer Arnold Kopelson was mounting fictional virus thriller "Outbreak" for Warner Bros.
McGehee said the script closely follows Richard Preston's bestseller, based on the real-life story of an Army SWAT team containing a killer virus that wiped out the primate population at a Virginia research lab in 1989.
"It's a great script, very similar to the original story," he added.
They are aiming for a winter production start, following completion of a draft penned by prolific writer Erik Jendresen ("Band of Brothers," "The 300 Spartans").