'Infinite' Replaces Captain America With A Hamburger Salesman

In what has to be one of the biggest examples of downgrading ever, the Antoine Fuqua film Infinite is set to replace Chris Evans with Mark Wahlberg. Evans just recently dropped out of the acton thriller, and Wahlberg is now in talks to take over his role in the film about near-immortal men and women reincarnated over the centuries. So I guess this is kind of like Highlander, with Mark Wahlberg. Yay?

THR has the news about Mark Wahlberg replacing Chris Evans in the Infinite movie cast. The movie centers on "a group of near-immortal men and women who are reincarnated over the centuries and known as the Infinite. To defeat an evil mastermind, the group must rely on a man who suffers from schizophrenia and who will have to learn that all his vivid dreams are actually memories from past lives, in order to defeat the villain." Wahlberg would be playing the schizophrenic character.

The film is an adaptation of D. Eric Maikranz's novel The Reincarnationist Papers, which was written in the style of a real manuscript discovered in an antique store. Here's the book's synopsis:

Discovered in an antique store in Rome at the close of the last century, The Reincarnationist Papers offers a tantalizing glimpse into the Cogmonina, a secret society of people who enjoy total recall of their past lives and know by experience that they will incarnate into new bodies after their deaths. Associating with one another in each successive life, some are agents of change working lifetime after lifetime toward their goals, some are catalysts to history, some pursue loves and friendships through the ages, while others are jaded, self indulgent hedonists, staggering from life to life.

Haunted by memories of two past lives, a troubled young man struggles to survive on LA's seamy underbelly. Recounted in three notebooks, Evan Michaels details the loneliness of his unique existence, his discovery of another like him and his eventual acceptance into the secret Cognomina.

That actually sounds pretty neat, although it also sounds like more of a dramatic thriller than an action pic, which is how this movie adaptation is being sold. Antoine Fuqua is at the helm, with a script from Ian Shorr.

Now, I'm not saying having Chris Evans in this movie would automatically make it better than having Mark Wahlberg. For all we know, the movie might turn out to be cool with Wahlberg in the lead. Still, it's hard not to think of replacing Captain America with one of the owners of Wahlburgers as a bit of a step backwards.