UPDATE 8/15: The number landed at the floor. Per Deadline’s Saturday estimates, Oak Street is heading for a $20 million opening with a B CinemaScore, less than half of The Meg and neck and neck with PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie for third. Full breakdown of the opening weekend here.
UPDATE 8/12: The Rotten Tomatoes score hit, and it hit high. Oak Street debuted at 85 percent, higher than every Jurassic sequel, giving the legs case its first real proof. Original article follows.
The comeback story finally has an opening weekend number.
Deadline has Warner Bros.’ The End of Oak Street tracking for a $20 million to $25 million debut this weekend from an estimated 3,400 theaters, with previews starting Thursday at 1 p.m.
The Bad Robot dinosaur thriller comes from It Follows director David Robert Mitchell and stars Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a family whose neighborhood suddenly finds itself dropped into a prehistoric jungle.
Deadline also puts the net production budget at $80 million. Warner Bros. is positioning the movie as the last big PG-13 swing of the summer before kids start heading back to school.
The Meg Math Isn’t Pretty
Deadline’s comparisons to The Meg and Rampage deliver the tougher part.
Unaided awareness for Oak Street is running behind Warner Bros.’ other PG-13 monster movies The Meg and Rampage.
Those are significant gaps.
The Meg opened to $45.4 million in August 2018, while Rampage debuted to $35.7 million a few months earlier that same year.
Even at the top of its $20 million to $25 million projection, Oak Street would open roughly 45 percent below The Meg and 30 percent below Rampage.
And those are 2018 grosses. Factor in higher ticket prices today, and the difference in actual admissions gets even wider.
The good news is Oak Street does not carry the same cost.
Both The Meg and Rampage cost well north of $100 million and relied heavily on China, where The Meg alone made more than $150 million.
At an $80 million net production budget, Oak Street does not need Meg-sized numbers to make the math work.
Anne Hathaway Is Selling It, But The Premium Screens Are Spoken For
The clear positive in Deadline’s data is Anne Hathaway.
Hathaway is registering as a strong first choice among women, which lines up with what The Quorum has been showing all summer.
Interest in Oak Street has consistently run ahead of awareness, most recently at 44 percent interest against 32 percent awareness.
In other words, people appear interested once they actually know the movie exists. The challenge has been getting enough of them to know about it.
The other limitation is the screen situation.
Oak Street gets premium screens, but it is sharing them. Per Deadline, the movie splits IMAX with The Odyssey and PLF auditoriums with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and both of those movies are still filling the premium formats.
And neither movie is giving them up.
Brand New Day blew past $1.67 billion on its way toward $2 billion, while Nolan’s epic just passed The Dark Knight Rises at $1.1 billion to become his biggest movie ever.
With those numbers, exhibitors have little reason to hand more of their most valuable screens to the new movie.
Oak Street Needs Legs More Than A Huge Opening
No movie on the summer tracking board has moved around quite like this one.
The End of Oak Street went from the worst trajectory of any major studio release to the biggest gainer on the board, and eventually became a legitimate contender for August’s surprise breakout.
What never changed were the stakes for Bad Robot.
J.J. Abrams’ company is closing its Los Angeles office, its Warner Bros. first-look deal expires at the end of the year, and Oak Street has effectively become the final exhibit in the was-Bad-Robot-worth-it debate.
A $20 million to $25 million opening does not answer that question by itself.
Back-of-the-napkin math says an $80 million net production probably needs somewhere around $200 million worldwide once marketing is factored in.
So this one is going to be decided by legs, not just opening weekend.
August has rewarded that kind of movie before. The Meg rode a 3.2x multiplier to $145 million domestic after opening much bigger.
Oak Street also gets one week of open road to build word of mouth before Insidious: Out of the Further arrives on August 21.
The tracking has been saying the same thing for weeks: people seem to like this movie once they find out about it.
Friday starts counting how many actually found out. The Rotten Tomatoes Score also has yet to hit.
The End of Oak Street opens in theaters Friday, August 14, starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, with J.J. Abrams producing. For the full summer picture, see our summer box office tracking roundup.
Correction: An earlier version of this article said Oak Street would not have IMAX screens. Deadline’s subsequent reporting has the movie sharing IMAX with The Odyssey and PLF with Brand New Day, and the article has been updated accordingly.
