This summer is shaping up to be a different kind of movie season with various studios going different routes with their big releases, between classic theatrical releases, the new hybrid model found on HBO Max and Disney+ and more big-budget movies than ever finding first homes on streaming than ever before. Mark Wahlberg’s upcoming sci-fi action film Infinite is going right to Paramount+ in just a couple weeks and we have a first look at it.
It was just announced the other day that Training Day director Antoine Fuqua’s latest movie would hit the new streaming service instead of theaters. And now we have a release date along with the trailer for the epic filled with car stunts, star power and a story centered on reincarnation. Mark Wahlberg stars as a mysterious man who learns that his hallucinations are actually real memories from his past lives. Trippy, right?
The trailer opens with a bearded Chiwetel Ejiofor entering an interrogation room with Mark Wahlberg’s character of Evan Michaels and laying down a number of items on the table. Ejiofor pushes him to his limits asking him if the various items belong to him while pulling a gun on him with a single bullet in it. While Evan holds one of the items, he started to remember something, perhaps jogging his memory about one of his past lives.
Then Kingsman actress Sophie Cookson zooms in to grab Evan from wherever he’s being held, leading to a high-pursuit chase through a building. We then learn through the voice over that Mark Wahlberg’s character is what is called an “infinite,” who has apparently lived and died thousands of times before. It sounds like the plot revolves around Evan needing to understand who he was in his past lives in order to unlock something extraordinary.
Infinite is an adaptation of the 2009 novel The Reincarnationist Papers, which is about a “mind-bending” conspiracy that he gets tied up in following his visions from a past life. It also looks like Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character will have an interesting role in the film, as we see a wall of compartments with the names of people on them and him presumably hunting him down throughout the film. The actor also played the villain to some eternal beings in 2020’s big Netflix hit The Old Guard too.
Infinite was originally going to hit theaters back in summer 2020, but was then delayed to September of this year due to COVID-19. Paramount has now decided to abandon its theatrical release altogether and debut the film on its new streaming service in just two weeks, on June 10. The decision was likely made as the studio aims to reel in more subscribers since debuting back in March.
Other big movies heading to Paramount+ in the near future are A Quiet Place Part II and Top Gun: Maverick, except those movies will have a 45-day exclusive theatrical run before hitting the new streaming site. The swift release of Infinite is a bit out of left field, but with competition next to Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+ and so forth Paramount+ is definitely joining the streaming war this summer.
