The box office gods are fickle. That must be what the suits at Warner Bros. are thinking this year. Last year, after a rocky start with Mickey 17, they had non-stop critical and box office hits, with Sinners, Weapons, A Minecraft Movie, and so many others leading the charge. This year, they seemingly can’t get a hit, with movies like The Mummy, Evil Dead Burn, Supergirl, and many others unable to gain any traction whatsoever at the box office. The jury is still out on their latest, The End of Oak Street, which opened to an “okay” $2 million-plus (final numbers aren’t in yet) Thursday night, with screenings starting early at 1 p.m.
The film has been earning excellent reviews and boasts a powerhouse cast that includes Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, but the potential $2 million start is on the low side for a movie like this. Other movies that made in this neighbourhood include Mickey 17, which made $2.5 million in previews and opened to $19 million (about what we predicted for this), and Cocaine Bear, which made $23 million. That would be on the high end for a movie that seems doomed to open in the high teens, making it very unlikely it will be able to place second at the box office, with The Odyssey likely to score second place unless a movie like PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie manages to pull in a big family audience.
The End of Oak Street is a nostalgic tribute to the kind of movies routinely put out by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment in the eighties and nineties, with Poltergeist and the original Jurassic Park clearly strong influences. Hopefully, audiences give it a chance, as it really deserves to do well, with it being a non-sequel tentpole movie with a better-than-average cast. We’ll be back later this weekend with more box office stats.