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For over thirty years now, there’s been one franchise that comes to mind when we consider dinosaur movies: Jurassic Park. Even before the dormant sci-fi adventure series was revived with Jurassic World and turned into a billion-dollar movie franchise, it beat the competition in nearly every possible way. Countless other movies have come along the way to try and compete in the dinosaur movie space, but more often than not, they fail for one reason or another. This summer will see another try, and make a name for itself in the subgenre, and it’s deliberately trying to carve out a place for itself by not just repeating Jurassic Park.
This summer’s The End of Oak Street from writer/director David Robert Mitchell and producer JJ Abrams sees a quiet suburban street being transported to prehistoric times, and their new neighbors will bear their teeth. Speaking with Empire in a new preview for the film, Abrams was quick to note that The End of Oak Street isn’t trying to be another Jurassic Park, and the setting proves that. “David’s whole approach here was the juxtaposition of the absolute mundane suburban family life — swing sets and ice-cream trucks, and above-ground pools and school buses — and dinosaurs. If there’s any part of you that is excited by what you saw in the trailers, I can promise that the movie will deliver on everything.”
The End of Oak Street Knows It Has to Do Something Else From Jurassic Park
Abrams went on to note that another detail that separates The End Of Oak Street from Jurassic Park (which just released its seventh movie last summer in Jurassic World Rebirth) is that it’s original and new, not a part of a franchise.
“I think people are hungry for new stories,” Abrams said. “And to me, the undeniable appeal of this is the fact that it takes place in suburbia…I love the Jurassic movies as much as anyone, but those films, for the most part, take place in these beautiful jungles, these distant islands.”
For the most part, Abrams is right. The only times that Jurassic Park and Jurassic World have toyed with the dinosaurs in places that aren’t an island off Costa Rica or an exotic location elsewhere are fleeting at best. The Lost World: Jurassic Park, of course, has a full sequence of a T. Rex running through San Diego, drinking from a pool behind a house, and chasing a bus down the street. Beyond that, there are a few others, with a brief montage of dinosaurs interacting with the “real world” in Fallen Kingdom, Dominion, and Rebirth, but none have actually committed an entire film to something like dinosaurs in the suburbs.
This clear distinction that The End Of Oak Street has from the Jurassic movies is certainly one major thing that works in its favor, because the appeal of those movies has never just been “dinosaurs in exotic locations” but rather just the first word alone, “dinosaurs.” To that end, it will be interesting to see how audiences react to the film, but also how it fares at the box office. Though none of the other movies that open the same week as The End Of Oak Street seem like they’ll pose that much competition to it, the film does arrive just two weeks after Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a film that could easily become the biggest hit of the entire year.
One detail that Abrams doesn’t denote, but which also could work in The End Of Oak Street‘s favor over other failed attempts to occupy the dinosaur movie space, is the cost. Though not confirmed, the film carries a reported budget of $85 million, which means that Warner Bros. has put real money behind it. Other dinosaur movies often find themselves working on the cheap, though carrying a lower budget worked in favor of recent hits like Primitive War; it was a hindrance on films that tried to copy Jurassic Park, like Carnosaur.
To that end, The End Of Oak Street could be a sleeper hit this summer. Not only is it giving audiences a new attempt at putting dinosaurs on the big screen that isn’t part of the Jurassic franchise, but it’s doing it in a totally different way. Plus, they spared no expense. The End of Oak Street stomps into theaters on August 14th, 2026.
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