David Robert Mitchell has spent his career making films about ordinary places turned hostile. “It Follows” turned suburban Detroit into a slow-motion nightmare. “Under the Silver Lake” made Los Angeles feel like a conspiracy. His new film does both at once — and adds dinosaurs.
“The End of Oak Street” opens in theaters and IMAX on August 14, Warner Bros. confirmed, with international audiences getting it two days earlier on August 12. It’s Mitchell’s biggest production by a wide margin — $85 million, Bad Robot producing, Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway starring — and the first time the director has worked at studio scale after two films made largely outside the Hollywood system.
The premise is deceptively simple. A quiet suburban neighborhood called Oak Street gets ripped out of reality by a mysterious cosmic event and dropped somewhere else entirely — somewhere prehistoric, as it turns out, complete with dinosaurs that don’t particularly care about property lines. Played by McGregor, Hathaway, Maisy Stella, and Christian Convery, the Platt family is forced into a desperate fight for survival before their neighbors catch on. Warner Bros. is rating it PG-13 and positioning it squarely as a late-summer family blockbuster, the kind of film that works in the same IMAX seat for a 13-year-old and their parents, per Moviefone.
Getting here took three years and two title changes. The film shot under the name “Flowervale Street” with Oscar Isaac originally set opposite Hathaway, before Isaac dropped out of negotiations in early 2024 and McGregor stepped in, Rotten Tomatoes’ explainer noted. Warner Bros. pushed the release twice — first from May 2025, then from March 2026 — before committing to August 14 and rebranding the film with its current title in January, backed by a teaser that deliberately withheld the dinosaur angle for as long as possible. A second, plot-heavy trailer followed in the spring and gave audiences their clearest look yet at what they’re in for.
The film was shot natively in IMAX using certified large-format cameras — not an upconversion done in post-production, per the official Warner Bros. site. That distinction matters for the ticket premium audiences will pay, and it suggests Warner Bros. is treating the release as something to be experienced on the biggest screen available rather than simply carried by a household name cast.
Michael Giacchino scored the film and Michael Gioulakis shot it — the same cinematographer Mitchell used on “It Follows” — with J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot banner producing alongside Hannah Minghella, Jon Cohen, Mitchell, Matt Jackson, and Tommy Harper, per Wikipedia. John Axelrad edited.
Advance 4DX screenings have already taken place, and early audience word from those showings has been cautiously positive — According to MovieReleases, social media reactions have repeatedly described the film as a rare mix of suspense, scares, excitement, and family-friendly entertainment. AMC Theatres has showtimes up now, with tickets already on sale ahead of the August 14 opening.
Critical reviews haven’t landed yet. If Mitchell’s track record holds, they’ll be divided — both his previous films split audiences sharply. The difference this time is the budget, the studio, and the fact that he’s aiming for a crowd rather than a niche. Whether Oak Street survives the dinosaurs is answered in the film. Whether the film survives the late-summer box office gets answered August 14.
