The theatrical box office doesn’t always tell the full story of what audiences actually want to watch. Original sci-fi movies, in particular, can struggle to find an audience in theaters, only to get a whole new lease on life once they arrive on streaming. And that seems to be happening to one of the summer’s more entertaining releases, a thriller from the director of It Follows that perhaps deserved a little more attention during its theatrical run.
A Quiet Summer Release May Be Finding the Audience It Missed in Theaters
The End of Oak Street arrived on HBO Max on Nov.13, and barely a day later, it had already climbed to No. 1 on the platform’s movie chart, overtaking familiar favorites like Matilda and The Hunger Games. For anyone who missed it in August, David Robert Mitchell’s film drops a 1982 Michigan cul-de-sac into the age of dinosaurs after a cosmic anomaly tears the neighborhood out of its own time.
Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor play Denise and Greg Platt, a couple whose marriage is quietly falling apart right up until staying alive becomes the more pressing concern, with Maisy Stella and Christian Convery as their kids. It’s a Bad Robot production with J.J. Abrams producing and a Michael Giacchino score, and the narrative moves with the brisk confidence of a movie that knows exactly how long it should be.
HBO Max Is Giving ‘The End of Oak Street’ Sci-Fi Thriller a Second Life
Despite an 86% Certified Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes and reviews calling it the surprise of the summer, the film opened to $21 million against the third weekend of Spider-Man: Brand New Day and topped out at $122 million worldwide. On a budget reported between $80 and $92 million, Variety pegged Warner Bros.’ expected loss at somewhere between $25 and $40 million. The timing didn’t help, and neither did a bumpy road to release that saw the film delayed twice, partly because Hathaway was busy shooting Nolan’s The Odyssey when reshoots were needed.
The home audience clearly didn’t share theatergoers’ hesitation. The film topped Amazon’s VOD chart for three consecutive weeks after its September digital debut, which made this HBO Max takeover feel close to inevitable. It also fits a broader trend for Hathaway, who has quietly had one of the busier years of any A-lister, with The Devil Wears Prada 2 and The Odyssey grossing nearly $2 billion combined.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
