Outbreak is a 1995 American medical disaster film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and based on Richard Preston's 1994 nonfiction book The Hot Zone. The film stars Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland, and co-stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Spacey and Patrick Dempsey. Army doctors struggle to find a cure for a deadly virus spreading throughout a California town that was brought to America by an African monkey.