Claim: Patrick Dempsey was in a movie.

Outbreak is a 1995 American medical disaster film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and loosely based on Richard Preston 's nonfiction book , The Hot Zone . It stars Dustin Hoffman , Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman , and co-stars Cuba Gooding Jr. , Kevin Spacey , Donald Sutherland and Patrick Dempsey .   The film focuses on an outbreak of a fictional Ebola-like virus , Motaba , in Zaire and later in a small town in the United States . It is primarily set in the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the fictional town of Cedar Creek , California . Outbreak plot speculates how far military and civilian agencies might go to contain the spread of a deadly , contagious disease .   The film , released on March 10 , 1995 , was a box-office success and Spacey won two awards for his performance . A real-life outbreak of the Ebola virus was occurring in Zaire when the film was released .