Pro-tip: If you’re a vaguely sci-fi-themed film scheduled for release in 2021 that’s not based on an acceptable IP, prepare yourself for one of two possibilities. Either you’ll get delayed until next year, where you’ll probably be shunted off on to the general populace during Cold January or Hot January (i.e., August), or, more likely, you’ll get pushed on to a streaming service. It happened for The Tomorrow War, it happened to the odd-sounding Finch (formally titled BIOS), and now it has happened to Antoine Fuqua’s Infinite, a reincarnation-themed actioner starring Marky Mark. Spencer Confidential, what have you wrought upon us?
Originally scheduled to hit theaters on September 24, Deadline reports that the film will now premiere directly on Paramount+. Why? Well, first of all, Paramount+ is doing better than the suits at Viacom expected, and actually exceeded its growth targets for Q1 of this fiscal year. Second, Paramount is scaling up its movie library (they’re going from around a thousand titles to about 2500 in the next month), and wants to have a new original movie premiere on the service each week, just like Netflix. Third, and perhaps the most important reason, September 24 will a crowded day at the multiplex even without Infinite, given that Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Searchlight’s Dear Evan Hansen, and The Many Saints of Newark — which all the Sopranos shitposters will probably lose their minds over — are all expected to go wide on that date.
Here’s how Deadline summarizes the film’s plot:
“Based on the book ‘The Reincarnationist Papers’ with a screen story by Todd Stein and screenplay by Ian Shorr, ‘Infinite’ follows Evan McCauley (Wahlberg), a guy who is haunted daily by skills he has never learned and the memories of places he’s never visited. Self-medicated and on the brink of a mental breakdown, he is rescued by a secret group whose members call themselves ‘Infinites.’ They reveal to him that his memories are real — but they are from multiple past lives[…] The Infinites bring Evan into their extraordinary world, where a gifted few are given the ability to be reborn with their memories and knowledge accumulated over centuries. With critical secrets buried in his past, Evan must work with the Infinites to unlock the answers in his memories in a race against time to save humanity from one of their own (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who seeks to destroy it.”
No word yet if this is the new, grittier origin story for the Funky Bunch, but if that sounds like your bag — and you’re a big Rugrats fan — Infinite will hit Paramount+ at some point in June.