Director Ridley Scott’s planned TV drama about the Ebola epidemic has been fast-tracked.

Based on Richard Preston’s 1994 bestseller The Hot Zone, Scott’s project has been 10 years in the making, but recent events have fast-tracked the series, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

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The Alien director has taken a break from Exodus: Gods and Kings to work on the TV series for Fox.

Producer Lynda Obst told the Hollywood Reporter that the project has become incredibly timely.

“I think it’s the speed with which it (Ebola) 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.”

World leaders have declared the Ebola outbreak the worst global health emergency in years, so far killing 4500 people.

Earlier this week, the World Health Organisation warned there could be up to 10,000 new cases a week in two months time.

A highly infectious, deadly virus from the central African rain forest suddenly appears in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There is no cure. In a few days 90 percent of its victims are dead. A secret military SWAT team of soldiers and scientists is mobilised to stop the outbreak of this exotic “hot” virus. The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their “crashes” into the human race. Shocking, frightening, and impossible to ignore, The Hot Zone proves that truth really is scarier than fiction.

Buy The Hot Zone from Booktopia here.