End of Oak Street Opening Weekend: The $20M Reality

The End of Oak Street Landed at the Bottom of Every Projection — and Second Place Is Still Unsettled

Three days ago, five outlets were publishing five different opening figures for The End of Oak Street. The weekend has now happened, and here is the honest state of it: the number landed at the bottom of every one of those ranges, and the film’s actual placing for the weekend is still not agreed on.

That second part matters more than it sounds, and almost nobody is reporting it.

The short answer

The End of Oak Street opened to roughly $20 million domestically, at the very bottom of Warner Bros.’ own $18–23 million forecast. It took $8.1 million on Friday including previews. Against a production budget above $80 million, that is a soft start — despite strong reviews.

What actually happened on Friday

The hard number, the one nobody disputes, is the opening day.

The End of Oak Street landed in second place on opening day with $8.1 million from 3,446 North American theatres. That included $2.5 million from Thursday previews, with Warner Bros. going in projecting an opening weekend in the range of $18 million to $23 million.

The Hollywood Reporter had the film eyeing an opening weekend around $20 million off that Friday figure. Variety reported rival studios estimating about $18.7 million by Sunday, and described it as a soft start given a production cost above $80 million. A report citing Deadline’s Saturday morning estimates put it at $20 million — the very bottom of Deadline’s projected $20 to $25 million range, with some sources seeing it finish under $20 million.

So: $18.7 million, $20 million, “under $20 million.” A spread of well over a million dollars on a weekend that has already finished.

Why the estimates still disagree after the weekend is over

This is the part worth understanding, because it will happen again next Friday and the Friday after.

Nothing you read on a Saturday or a Sunday is a measured figure. Studios report Friday, model Saturday and Sunday from historical multipliers, and release an estimate. Actuals — the real, counted number — arrive on Monday. A film with an unusual audience shape breaks the model, and a family or four-quadrant title with a heavy Saturday is exactly the kind that does.

Which means the correct thing to say tonight is: around $20 million, probably, and check again Monday. Anyone publishing a precise figure as settled fact today is publishing a projection with the hedging removed.

The three-way fight for second

Here is the genuinely unresolved bit.

Forbes reported Spider-Man: Brand New Day projected at $67 million for the weekend, The Odyssey second with $23 million, and The End of Oak Street at $20 million battling PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie — also at $20 million — for third place.

But that ordering is not what the Friday reporting implied. Variety’s Friday round-up had Oak Street second on the day, PAW Patrol third with $7.35 million from 3,545 cinemas and heading to about $20 million for the weekend, and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey at No. 4. Variety had earlier reported The Odyssey aiming to add $17 million to $20 million in its fifth weekend — a range whose top end overlaps with the other two films entirely.

Put those together and places two, three and four are three films inside a band of roughly three million dollars, measured with a tool that has an error margin of about that size. The order will be decided by Monday’s actuals, not by any headline published this weekend.

If you want one takeaway from this article, it is that one.

The number that is not soft: Spider-Man

While three films argue over second, the film in first is doing something historic.

Sony’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day pulled $19 million on Friday heading to $67 million for its third consecutive weekend at No. 1, which would put it at a North American total of $782.8 million for its first 17 days — fifth on the all-time domestic chart, just behind Avatar at $785.2 million and above Top Gun: Maverick’s $718 million.

Read that gap again. $2.4 million. Spider-Man passes Avatar on the all-time domestic list within days, possibly by the time you read this.

The $67 million weekend represents roughly a 53% decline from the previous frame. The film set the record for the biggest domestic opening weekend of all time at $360 million, surpassing Avengers: Endgame, crossed $1 billion worldwide before its second weekend, added $144.2 million domestically in that frame, and entered its third weekend on $715.8 million domestic and $1.108 billion international for $1.823 billion worldwide.

A 53% third-weekend drop on a film of that size is not a stumble. It is what a blockbuster with genuine legs looks like when the opening was so front-loaded that the percentages stop meaning much.

Is $20 million actually a failure for Oak Street?

Not straightforwardly, and this is where the coverage splits into two moods that are both defensible.

The bear case is simple arithmetic. The film carries an $80 million production budget and comes from Bad Robot. Marketing on a wide August release from a major studio typically adds a substantial figure on top of that, and a $20 million domestic opening does not put a film on a path to clear it quickly. One report framed it as a tank and noted Warner Bros. is now 0-for-8 on $40 million openings in 2026 — a claim worth flagging as coming from a single outlet rather than the studio.

The bull case rests on two data points that genuinely matter.

Reviews are strong — 84% on Rotten Tomatoes — and exit polling gave it a B on CinemaScore, which Variety noted leaves a real chance the film sticks around in theatres and justifies its price tag. The Hollywood Reporter cited an 85% critics score, which is the ordinary drift you get as reviews keep being counted.

And Warner Bros. was projecting $20 million to $25 million internationally on top of the domestic number. August is also the emptiest corridor of the calendar — a film with good word of mouth has weeks of thin competition ahead of it before the autumn slate arrives.

A B CinemaScore is the honest middle of that argument. It is not the A− that signals a long hold, and it is not the C+ that signals collapse by next Friday. It means people mostly liked it.

What the film actually is

Worth stating plainly, because the marketing has been vague enough that a lot of people arrived at the weekend unsure.

It Follows filmmaker David Robert Mitchell wrote and directed The End of Oak Street, which follows a suburban family whose neighbourhood is suddenly blipped to prehistoric times, with Anne Hathaway starring alongside Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery and Jordan Alexa Davis.

An $80 million dinosaur survival film from the director of a low-budget indie horror classic, produced by J.J. Abrams’ company, opening opposite a Spider-Man film in its third week and a rival dinosaur cartoon on the same weekend. That is a lot of variables, and at least two of them were scheduling decisions.

The rest of the weekend

PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie took $7.35 million on Friday from 3,545 cinemas and was projected around $20 million for the weekend — in line with predecessor The Mighty Movie, which opened to $22 million and finished its run at $205 million. That earlier film opened to $22.7 million in late September, and the new one holds an 86% critics score.

Also opening were the Matthew McConaughey thriller The Rivals of Amziah King, the Kristen Stewart-led comedy The Wrong Girls, and the Green Day-inspired comedy Nimrods with Mason Thames and Mckenna Grace. Variety had that group looking at single-digit openings. Forbes also had the music documentary Katseye: Wild Hearts forecast to open at $3.6 million.

Two dinosaur films on the same weekend, both landing at roughly the same number, is the kind of scheduling collision that studios usually manage to avoid.

What to watch on Monday

Three things resolve when the actuals post:

1. Whether Oak Street holds $20 million or slips beneath it. The under-$20 million scenario was live in Saturday reporting.
2. The final order for places two through four. The Odyssey, Oak Street and PAW Patrol are effectively tied within the margin of error.
3. Whether Spider-Man has already passed Avatar on the all-time domestic chart, or does it midweek.

None of those is answered by a headline published today. All three are answered by Monday afternoon.

Key Takeaways

• The End of Oak Street opened to roughly $20 million domestically, at the bottom of Warner Bros.’ own $18–23 million forecast.
• Friday was $8.1 million from 3,446 theatres, including $2.5 million in Thursday previews.
• Estimates still range from about $18.7 million to $20 million — actuals land Monday.
• Second, third and fourth place are unresolved: The Odyssey, Oak Street and PAW Patrol all sit within about three million dollars of each other.
• Against a budget above $80 million, the opening is soft — but 84% on Rotten Tomatoes and a B CinemaScore leave room for legs in a quiet August.
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day won a third straight weekend with about $67 million, reaching roughly $782.8 million domestic — within $2.4 million of Avatar on the all-time domestic chart.

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