Development: The Beatles never existed in Danny Boyle's Yesterday; Chris Evans sets post-MCU role

Chris Evans is going on a very different quest in one of his first post-Marvel roles; and what if The Beatles never existed(?), as we venture into a new round of development news.

Evans is in talks to star in Infinite, a new film from Paramount Pictures, director Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer) and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Bumblebee). According to Deadline, the movie is based on a novel by D. Eric Maikranz called The Reincarnationist Papers, in which a man named Evan Michaels finds himself haunted by memories of two past lives.

As a result of this, Michaels discovers the existence of the Cognomina, a secret society of people who remember all their past lives and have changed the course of history throughout the centuries, with whom he wants to join up.

Evans may have some experience with altering history even before he gets to Infinite: it's widely speculated that the upcoming Avengers: Endgame — heavily rumored to be Evans' final appearance as Captain America — will involve either time travel or alternate realities as Cap and the team seek to reverse the Thanos decimation.

Speaking of alternate realities, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and almost James Bond director Danny Boyle has just unveiled the first trailer for his new film, Yesterday (see above).

In the film, a struggling singer-songwriter named Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) who lives in a small British town and wakes up to find himself in a world where the Beatles never existed...but only he remembers all their songs, allowing him to claim them as his own and become the world's biggest pop star.

While the trailer plays up the more whimsical, romantic and satirical aspects of the story (Kate McKinnon from the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot appears as a calculating music industry exec, for example), the event that causes the disappearance of the Beatles from our existence is some sort of mysterious worldwide blackout. Plus the whole concept of an alternate chain of historical events has been a genre staple in everything from The Butterfly Effect to The Man in the High Castle. And besides, what would life and music actually be like if the Beatles were never here?

In addition to Patel and McKinnon, the movie stars Lily James (Cinderella) as Jack's lifelong friend and arrives in theaters on June 28.