The End of Oak Street Could Make Dino Movies Cool Again!
Science Fiction, Mystery and an Intriguing Director is the Key
“We Can’t do Dinosaur Movies Because it’s Already Been Done,” a studio producer once famously said. And for a long time, that was the way it went. Then in 2023 Sony said screw it, we have Adam Driver and decided to do 65, a fantastic idea about Dinosaurs and an Alien visit to Earth when the Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs showed up. But it failed… badly.
Now 3 years later Warner Brothers has decided to take a stab at a Dino movie with THE END OF OAK STREET. No one but Universal has succeeded with the terrible lizards, so is this movie screwed before it even hits theaters? Actually… no. The End of Oak Street has a couple of interesting things going for it.
First, the premise of this movie is based on a mystery. A family neighborhood goes to sleep and waked up in Dino land. So on top of mystery, we also have what might be science fiction via time travel or alien interdiction perhaps.
The other intriguing element to this movie is writer/director David Robert Mitchell, who directed one of the most interesting horror films in years with It Follows in 2014.
The director followed that up with 2018’s Under the Silver Lake ended up being an A24 failure losing money at the box office. Mitchell got a little too creative leaning heavily into surrealism and A24 had a shifty release strategy.
That said, because of It Follows, Under the Silver Lake had high expectations and Mitchell ended up in Director’s Jail where he prompt began writing sequels for It Follows and a story about a family who wakes up in their neighborhood, but far from home.
Initially titled Flowervale Street, In 2023, Warner Brothers, Bad Robot and Jackson Pictures began producing the film with Mitchell directing. In January, 2026, the studio decided the film title wasn’t good enough and it was changed to The End of Oak Street with an August release.
Mitchell needs a win after his last failure and it just feels like he isn’t going to waste his opportunity here. He also has a very creative way of telling stories with interesting ideas and if he can somehow not make this all about the dinosaurs and trying to compete with the Jurassic franchise, he has a chance to finally make Dino movies a possibility outside of Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg’s original creation. Hopefully he sticks to the science fiction and mystery and uses the dinosaurs as a seasoning on top of the meal.
The End of Oak Street is released wide on Aug. 14.
