Two weeks ago, the question was whether The End of Oak Street‘s tracking reversal was a trend or a bounce.
The new chart answers it: trend.
The Quorum’s latest eight-week tracking, published by Puck, has the J.J. Abrams-produced dinosaur thriller at 32 percent awareness, up six points, and 44 percent interest, up three, ten days before its August 14 release.
That’s the second consecutive chart of gains in both columns.
And The Quorum itself is now framing the movie as one of two films battling to become August’s surprise breakout hit.
A month ago, this was the film we flagged as the only major release on the board going the wrong way, sliding to 19 percent awareness and 36 percent interest. Then it flipped to the chart’s biggest gainer. Now it’s climbed again.
Across three charts, that’s 19 to 26 to 32 on awareness, and 36 to 41 to 44 on interest. Thirteen points of awareness recovered in a month.
The Quorum polls regular moviegoers every two weeks, scoring upcoming films on awareness (have you heard of it?) and interest (do you want to see it?), and the trajectory across editions matters as much as the score.
The Insidious Matchup
The other film in The Quorum’s August breakout race is Sony’s Insidious: Out of the Further, opening one week after Oak Street on August 21.
Insidious has the lead: 47 percent awareness against 48 percent interest.
Oak Street has the momentum: Insidious drifted down a point of awareness and three of interest this cycle while Oak Street gained six and three.
One movie is coasting on a franchise name. The other is being actively built in real time, and the demand gap that never stopped working, 44 interest against 32 awareness, says the ceiling hasn’t been reached.
Bad Robot’s Referendum Is Live
The stakes haven’t moved an inch.
Bad Robot is closing its Los Angeles office as its Warner Bros. first-look deal winds down, and Oak Street remains the last exhibit in the “was Bad Robot worth it” debate.
A month ago the numbers said the answer was going to be ugly. Now the dinosaurs-in-suburbia thriller from It Follows director David Robert Mitchell is climbing into its release date with the survey firm itself calling it a potential breakout.
Ten days. One more marketing push. The reversal already happened; now it just has to cash.
That final push is already visible: Hathaway and McGregor’s Esquire sit-down this week made Star Wars headlines of its own, with McGregor revealing nothing is moving on Obi-Wan Kenobi Season 2.
The End of Oak Street opens in theaters August 14, starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, with J.J. Abrams producing. For the full chart, see our summer tracking roundup.
