Writer-director-producer David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street is eyeing a $25 million domestic bow and equal international debut sales, biting down on up to $50 million this weekend. Some estimates call for $40-45 million range, but Warner is hoping positive buzz and reviews to drive an overperformance.
The End Of Oak Street – The Numbers
Spider-Man: Brand New Day will still dominate the weekend, but The End of Oak Street is earning praise for its pure entertainment value, and that is what puts butts in seats as summer winds down and the last of summer vacation is ticking away.
Families who’ve already seen Marvel’s latest Spidey flick, fans of the cast and especially Anne Hathaway, and plenty of walk-up audience who are still among the disinterested in superhero cinema could help lift The End of Oak Street. Enough positive word of mouth could translate into good weekday business from the summer vacation crowd and strong holds on weekend #2, but that depends on enough people seeing it this weekend to help spread the good word.
There are also a few additional markets further ahead on The End of Oak Street’s release schedule, including South Korea, Greece, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus across the second and third weekends. So that could help lift the film’s fortunes as well.
But box office alone isn’t where Oak Street depends on making all of its fortunes. This film should enjoy immense popularity when it hits rentals and home entertainment, not to mention TV and streaming rights. For those unaware, merchandising has vastly higher profit margins than box office, and merch is a gift that keeps on giving – forever, if you build a successful franchise. Speaking of…
The End Of Oak Street – Jurassic Lessons Learned
Off a roughly $85 million budget, The End of Oak Street demonstrates what the Jurassic Park franchise really needs to learn: people wanted to see the park open and what happens when dinosaurs get into our otherwise normal world, and both can be done in thrilling ways at reasonable budgets nowadays, and both can be done without gumming up the story with excessive plot and mutant dinosaurs and so on. It’s the classic case of not merely knowing what your audience wants, but why they want it, and then knowing how best to deliver it for them.
The End of Oak Street lacks IP/brand recognition, and it’s opening against two of the year’s biggest blockbusters (Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey), so it won’t play like Jurassic Park/World sequels. But that doesn’t mean Oak Street lacks lessons.
I believe the smartest move for Universal is to reboot entirely with a remake of Jurassic Park with modern awareness about the science and dinosaurs, and with photorealism now possible in productions like Apple’s brilliant and eye-popping Prehistoric Planet. Technology makes it possible to deliver all of this on much more reasonable budgets than the $200 million or more spent on Jurassic World sequels that see diminishing returns off ever-inflated investments.
The most recent entry in the dino-series, Jurassic World: Rebirth, still did huge box office to the tune of $872 million worldwide, but that was a significant downturn from previous billion dollar sequels, despite better reviews than its two predecessors (albeit still mixed to negative at 50% via Rotten Tomatoes).
The End of Oak Street proves a handful of characters in a limited location with half the budget of a franchise picture can still deliver more than enough outrageous excitement and scares for the price of admission, and get you out the door before you fall asleep or need a bathroom break. Plus, at just over an hour-and-a-half runtime, it’s well-paced counter-programming to the nearly three-hour The Odyssey and two-and-a-half hour Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
I hope The End of Oak Street beats expectations so its lessons are not ignored, because under different circumstances this would and should be one of summer’s sleeper hits. We’ll see if audiences get on board, but even modest box office sets up merchandising and home entertainment value that could still make sequels worthwhile.