UPDATE 8/4: The reversal held. Oak Street climbed again to 32 percent awareness and 44 percent interest on the newest chart, with The Quorum now calling it a contender for August’s surprise breakout. Original article follows.
Two weeks ago, The End of Oak Street was the only major release on the tracking chart going the wrong way.
The new chart flips the story completely.
The Quorum’s latest eight-week tracking, published by Puck, has the J.J. Abrams-produced dinosaur thriller at 26 percent awareness, up seven points, and 41 percent interest, up five, ahead of its August 14 release.
That’s the biggest gain of any film on the board, the same chart that just declared Spider-Man’s race over.
The context makes the swing bigger than it looks.
As we covered, the film had spent a month sliding, with awareness drifting from 22 to 19 and interest bleeding from 42 to 36 over four straight weeks, the worst trajectory of any major-studio release tracked.
One edition later, both losses are recovered and then some.
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.
Oak Street’s trajectory just did a full reversal.
The Hathaway Effect Arrived On Schedule
When we covered the slide, we flagged the one thing on the calendar that could bail this movie out: Anne Hathaway was about to be everywhere as Penelope in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, exactly the kind of free awareness a sinking August release could use.
The Odyssey opened this past weekend.
The tracking window for this chart covers the stretch where Hathaway’s face was on every screen and Warner Bros.’ Oak Street marketing finally switched on.
The seven-point awareness jump landed right inside that corridor.
The Pitch Still Sells Itself
The number that never stopped working is the gap.
Interest at 41 against awareness at 26 means the people who hear about this movie want to see it, the same signal that held even at the bottom of the slide.
The premise does the heavy lifting: dinosaurs invading mundane suburbia, swing sets and ice cream trucks instead of jungles and islands, directed by It Follows filmmaker David Robert Mitchell.
Abrams himself vouched for it to Empire, promising the movie delivers on everything.
Bad Robot Still Needs The Finish
None of this changes the stakes.
Bad Robot is closing its Los Angeles office with its Warner Bros. first-look deal running out at the end of the year, and Oak Street remains the next answer in the “was Bad Robot worth it” debate.
At 26 percent awareness under four weeks out, the hole is still real.
But for the first time all summer, the numbers are moving the same direction as the marketing spend.
Warner Bros. has one more chart cycle to prove the reversal is a trend and not a bounce.
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.
