Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg's upcoming sci-fi thriller 'Infinite', which has been directed by Antoine Fuqua, will exclusively debut on Paramount Plus in the U.S.
According to Variety, the move was announced by ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish on the company's quarterly earnings call on Thursday and comes as Paramount Plus seeking to bolster its lineup of original content.
The service, which was rebranded and relaunched in March after previously being known as CBS All Access, faces stiff competition in the streaming space, with rivals such as Netflix, Disney Plus, and HBO Max all fighting for subscribers.
Movies have become an important part of what Paramount Plus has been selling to customers. At an investor event last February, ViacomCBS announced that Paramount Plus would premiere major blockbusters such as 'A Quiet Place Part II' and 'Mission Impossible 7' on the service within 45 days of their theatrical debut (films had typically played exclusively in cinemas for roughly three months).
The company also announced that a number of films that had previously been earmarked for theatrical runs, such as a sequel to 'Paranormal Activity' and a prequel to 'Pet Sematary', will debut instead on Paramount Plus.
But 'Infinite' is the service's biggest swing from a movie's perspective. The film is a big-budget offering with A-list talent that will now skip theaters. It shows that the stakes in the streaming wars are getting higher now that Disney Plus is debuting Pixar films like 'Soul' and Warner Bros. is sending its entire theatrical slate to HBO Max, including the likes of 'Godzilla vs. Kong' and 'Dune'.
Bakish told investors that Paramount Plus will kick off a "Mountain of Movies" marketing campaign, highlighting the thousands of new movies it is adding to the service. As part of that, 1,000 additional movies will go live in early June, with additional titles following through July, which will bring the total number of titles to over 2,500.
"All of this is a preview to a substantial ramping up of original movies next year when we expect to begin averaging an original movie a week in 2022," Bakish said.
'Infinite' centers on a man named Evan McCauley (Mark Wahlberg), who is haunted by the fact that he demonstrates skills he has never learned and has memories of places he has never visited.
After encountering a secret group that calls themselves "Infinites," he discovers that his memories are real, but they are from multiple past lives. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sophie Cookson, Jason Mantzoukas, Rupert Friend with Toby Jones and Dylan O'Brien are co-stars.
( With inputs from ANI )
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