Plague Inc. Contagion Cancelled Achievement Guide & Walkthrough

The "Contagion Cancelled" achievement can only be unlocked while playing in the Nipah Virus scenario. The achievement's name, and probably the Nipah Virus itself, was maybe inspired by 2011 movie, "Contagion". In order to unlock this achievement, you'll need to trigger a certain pop-up event that notifies you of a movie being made about your plague. Upon seeing that (funny) pop-up, you'll then evolve a symptom to make the actors forget their lines, thus cancelling the production of the movie.

Credits to ErmacAuditore for helping me experiment on ways to unlock this achievement.

IMPORTANT: The first pop-up, that triggers this achievement, appears randomly. I wasn't able to force it to appear even after several games. Updates on strategy will be made once we find a way to force it to appear.

I chose to post this guide to provide people an idea of how to unlock this achievement(pop-up event pictures, etc.). The strategy does not work all the time.

There are two pop-ups you'll need to watch out for in order to unlock "Contagion Cancelled". The first one signifies that you've triggered the event and the second one marks that successful unlocking of the event. You don't need to finish the game in order to get the achievement.

There are few things I think you should know about before continuing on with the guide:

1. You'll have to devolve mutated symptoms right away. It might be a good idea to save some DNA before evolving something just so you have enough to devolve a mutated symptom as well.
2. The pop-ups could either appear immediately or after a long period of time. There are times when your cure progression would reach 95% while waiting. This could even happen twice while waiting for the 2 pop-ups to appear.
3. Use all three Genetic Re-Shuffles if the cure progression reaches 95%
4. Attempt to unlock this achievement in Normal difficulty. Brutal and Mega-Brutal would just make it so much harder to get this achievement. Casual is also an option but I haven't tried that yet
5. If at first you don't succeed, try again.

And now, the guide. First off, the gene setup:

• ATP Boost
• Aquacyte
• Trans-Stasis
• Creationist
• Extremophile

1.) Immediately after beginning, evolve the following:

• Bat 2
• Swine 1 and 2

2.) At this point, mutations will start to appear. Devolve any symptoms that appear except the ones listed here(You are not to evolve these symptoms right now):

• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Photophobia
• Drowsiness
• Dysphagia

3.) Continue by evolving the following abilities in this order:

• Drug Resistance 1 and 2
• Cold Resistance 1
• Heat Resistance 1

4.) Evolve the symptoms in step 2 now if they are yet to mutate.

5.) Keep devolving any unwanted symptom mutations and wait until there are approximately 6.1 billion people infected, then evolve the following:

• Headache
• Nuchal Rigidity
• Fever

TIP: From this point on, if the cure progression reaches 95%, immediately evolve all three Genetic Re-Shuffles. 

STOP DEVOLVING SYMPTOMS AT THIS POINT.

6.) Wait until a pop-up appears:

[plague name] film announced

What an amazing lineup of stars! After seeing this pop-up, evolve the following Memory Loss symptom right away. The closest(and cheapest) path to this symptom is Drowsiness - Confusion - Memory Loss

7.) Relax and wait for the final pop-up to appear:

[plague name] film fails!

Tsk tsk tsk. Bad actors. This pop-up marks the end of this guide and the unlocking of the Contagion Cancelled achievement. I hope this guide has helped you in some way.

There are times in certain games that waiting for the pop-ups to appear would take so long that the cure progression reaches 95% twice. On the second time, there's nothing left to slow down the cure, so you're best bet would be to hope that the final pop-up appears. I had one game where the final pop-up appeared exactly at 99% cure completion.

Strategy 2:
Follow the strategy for Who needs Science.

If the film pop-up appears, evolve Drowsiness, Confusion, and Memory Loss. The final pop-up that signifies the unlocking of the achievement should appear after some time.