The End of Oak Street is tanking with a $20 million opening and a B CinemaScore, and it was the first feature to come out of Bad Robot’s Warner Bros. deal.
So what is next for J.J. Abrams?
The short answer is that the movie that was supposed to be next is now more than a year away, and Bad Robot’s Warner Bros. deal expires before it gets there.
The Great Beyond Was Supposed To Open In November
Abrams’ actual comeback is The Great Beyond, a sci-fi fantasy he wrote and directed for Warner Bros. starring Glen Powell, Jenna Ortega, Emma Mackey, Sophie Okonedo, Merritt Wever and Samuel L. Jackson.
It is his first time in the director’s chair since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, and Abrams is also composing the score.
Warner Bros. teased it at CinemaCon in April with footage built around an H.G. Wells quote, retro machines booting up and Powell and Ortega crossing into some kind of hidden world.
Abrams told exhibitors he loves franchises but needed to get back to telling original stories.
It was dated for November 13 of this year. Then on July 15, Warner Bros. pushed it to October 1, 2027, in IMAX and IMAX 70mm, and bumped The Batman Part II off that date and into February 2028 to make room.
The studio’s explanation, per Deadline, is that a test screening at the Regal Irvine went well enough that Warner Bros. wanted 70mm IMAX prints, and Abrams, who was expected to finish post in September, now has time to strike them.
Not everyone buys it. World of Reel claimed at the time it had heard the opposite about how the movie tested. That is unverified, and no trade has reported it, so treat it as a rumor.
We’ve also been told the real reason for The Batman: Part II delay is because of James Gunn, not The Great Beyond.
Either way, the math is the math: by October 2027 it will be nearly eight years between J.J. Abrams movies, and there is still no public trailer.
What Oak Street Changes
Oak Street was the proof of concept: a Bad Robot original at Warner Bros., built on 1980s Amblin nostalgia, sold on a movie star and strong reviews.
The Great Beyond is a Bad Robot original at Warner Bros., built on 1980s nostalgia, sold on Glen Powell and Jenna Ortega, only bigger, in 70mm, and with Abrams’ own name on it as writer and director.
The proof of concept just returned a $20 million opening at the floor of its projection, less than half of The Meg, with audiences grading it a B and 85 percent from critics doing nothing to change that.
That is the lane Abrams’ comeback lives in, and the market just gave it a reading. Warner Bros. now gets 14 months to figure out how to sell an original throwback that its own dinosaur movie could not.
Bad Robot’s Deal Runs Out First
Bad Robot signed its Warner Bros. and HBO deal in 2019, reported at the time to be worth around $250 million, and the marquee projects attached to it, a Justice League Dark corner of the DC universe and The Overlook, the Shining prequel series, never got made.
That deal was replaced in late 2024 by a smaller two-year first-look pact. Seven years on, Oak Street is the first feature to reach theaters out of the arrangement, and the company is closing its Los Angeles office and shrinking to a smaller team in New York, where Abrams lives.
Deadline reports the Warner Bros. first-look runs at least through the end of the year.
What is left on the Bad Robot slate is thin: the animated Dr. Seuss adaptation Oh, The Places You’ll Go! at Warner Bros. Animation and Presumed Innocent season 2 at Apple. There is no reporting yet on where Bad Robot lands once the Warner Bros. deal lapses.
Which sets up the strange part. The Great Beyond now opens ten months after that deal expires, and if Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. closes on anything like the expected timeline, Abrams’ comeback will be released by a Paramount-owned studio.
That is a full circle. Paramount is where Abrams made Mission: Impossible III, Star Trek, Cloverfield and Super 8, and the Bad Robot deal is exactly the kind of Warner Bros. spending the merger was supposed to clean up.
Full circle with a twist: Abrams was one of the more than 1,000 signatories on the open letter opposing the merger. His comeback would be released by the company he signed a letter against.
Paramount has agreed not to close until a verdict in the antitrust trial, which could come as late as June 2027 unless the twelve states suing to block the deal settle first.
Even on that slow track, a June verdict lands before October, which makes a Paramount-owned Warner Bros. the most likely studio releasing Abrams’ comeback.
Abrams Could Be Back In Theaters Before The Great Beyond, With Star Trek
There is one more angle, and it comes from our own reporting.
Per our insiders, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are planning a “celebration of movies” theatrical series for next year: directors’ cuts and classic franchises in limited runs, red carpets and director and cast Q&As included, followed by new Blu-rays and collector’s merch.
The source’s list of titles: “Star Trek (JJs), Snyder, Ayer, Mission Impossible, etc.,” plus Harry Potter.
That means Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek,the movie from Bad Robot’s Paramount era, could be back on the big screen, with Abrams on the red carpet taking questions before his new movie even opens.
The source described the legacy re-releases as an easy way to make money from loyal fandoms and gauge demand for future projects.
Read that from Abrams’ side: the incoming owners are planning to celebrate the work he did for Paramount, at the same time the work he did for Warner Bros. is opening to $20 million.
Recall that our sources have said Ellison wants to take Paramount and Warner Bros. back to what works globally, and that it is rooted in the 80s.
An 80s-flavored original from the director of Super 8 should be a fit on paper. Whether Ellison’s regime sees Abrams as part of that plan, or as a Warner Bros. bet that did not pay off, is the real what-comes-next question.
The Pressure Now Falls On Abrams
Oak Street was the exhibit in the was-Bad-Robot-worth-it debate, and the verdict came back Saturday morning: bottom of the range and a B.
The next exhibit is Abrams himself, in 70mm, in October 2027, at a studio that will probably answer to a different owner by then.
And if our sources are right, his old Star Trek movies get their red carpets before his new one does.
Bad Robot needed Oak Street to make the case before the deal ran out. Instead, the case has been continued for 14 months, and the next witness is the man who signed the deal.
The End of Oak Street is now in theaters. The Great Beyond is scheduled for October 1, 2027. For the full picture on this weekend, see our opening projection and summer box office tracking roundup.
