Chris Evans Dodged A Bullet By Dropping Out Of Mark Wahlberg's 2021 Sci-Fi Failure

Few film projects were hotter in 2019 than "Infinite." Based on the novel "The Reincarnationist Letters" by D. Erik Maikranz, this ambitious sci-fi/action concoction was drawing comparisons to such hits as "The Matrix," "Wanted," "Inception," and the Jason Bourne franchise. The screenplay adaptation from Ian Shorr and Todd Stein made The Black List (an industry survey of the best unproduced screenplays) and was set up at Paramount Pictures with Antoine Fuqua attached to direct. When Chris Evans entered talks to star in the film, the franchise-lacking Paramount had reason to believe it'd found a blockbuster series to complement "Mission: Impossible" and "Transformers." (I'd include "Star Trek" here, but the studio seems intent on bungling the movies.) Then Evans dropped out of the film (due to a scheduling conflict with the miniseries "Defending Jacob"), and everything fell apart.

Mark Wahlberg replaced Evans as the film's lead, and the production commenced principal photography in September 2019 with a cast that included Chiwetel Ejiofor, Dylan O'Brien, Sophie Cookson, Rupert Friend and Jason Mantzoukas. The project's last stroke of good fortune was that the shoot wrapped before Covid-19 shut the world down. This forced Paramount to move the movie's release date to May 28, 2021. Then it moved the film back to September 24, 2021. Then the studio kiboshed the movie's theatrical release entirely and unceremoniously dumped "Infinite" to Paramount+ on June 10, 2021. This is not how you treat a potential franchise-launching film.

Would Evans' presence have been enough to fix everything that went wrong with "Infinite?" He's one of our most charismatic stars, but, from the 20 or so minutes of the movie that I could bear to sit through, I doubt this. The only mystery surrounding "Infinite" in 2025 is why it got made in the first place.

As just about every critic who panned the bejeezus out of "Infinite" noted, the movie isn't so much comparable to those aforementioned hits but blandly derivative of them. Wahlberg stars as an unemployable schizophrenic who discovers he's an Infinite, i.e. a being who can reincarnate and recall their past lives. The Infinites are split into two camps: the Believers, who want to save the world, and the Nihilists, who want to destroy it. Wahlberg's character is suffering from a type of PTSD that is interfering with his ability to remember his previous incarnations, which is a real bummer for him.

Ejiofor plays a prominent Nihilist who has developed a doomsday device that will destroy the planet, so he must, of course, be stopped. The Infinites are skilled at various forms of combat, but these "Matrix"-lite fight scenes lack novelty or snap. The movie works hard to awe you with its glossy style (I can't track down an official budget, but it looks like it was an expensive production), but it's so silly and incomprehensible that all you feel is sympathy for the poor actors struggling vainly to sell such dodgy material.

In case you're wondering, "Defending Jacob" wasn't a huge success for Evans. He received praise for his performance, but the miniseries as a whole left many critics and television viewers cold. This must've been disappointing for our once and, evidently, future Captain America, but it's damn sight better than getting trapped in a dud like "Infinite" (which did experience a brief resurgence at Prime Video in 2024).