‘The End of Oak Street’ Roars to $47 Million Worldwide Opening, While ‘Camp Miasma’ Kills in Limited Release

Warner Bros.’ The End of Oak Street, which is basically Jurassic Park in the suburbs, opened this weekend with a solid $21 million domestically and another $26 million internationally, giving the sci-fi popcorn blockbuster a $47 million global opening.

That was good enough for third place domestically behind two absolute monsters: Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which remained #1 with $70 million, and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which took second with another $23.2 million. 

Considering that competition, I think Oak Street ate pretty well.

The David Robert Mitchell film, starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, was made for a reported $80 million, which is actually fairly modest when you consider the scale of what’s on screen. It’s a big dinosaur blockbuster, but it wasn’t made for Jurassic World money. 

Reviews have also been strong, currently sitting at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, although audiences were a little less enthusiastic with a B CinemaScore. So maybe I’m being overly optimistic about the legs here, but I think word of mouth could keep this one going. 

My biggest question is why Warner Bros. opened it here in the first place.

We’re at the tail end of summer, kids are heading back to school, and theaters are incredibly crowded. Spider-Man is a phenomenon, The Odyssey refuses to die, and Oak Street is being asked to fight for oxygen against all of it.

In retrospect, it’s kind of perplexing.

This feels like exactly the kind of original popcorn movie that could have really popped with a cleaner summer release date. Maybe this was always the plan. Maybe Warner Bros. saw this as a smaller play. But now that we’ve actually seen the movie and the response to it, I can’t help wondering what it might have done with a better slot.