A new trailer for The End of Oak Street has stomped its way online, showing Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor being chased through suburbia by dinosaurs.
Yes, you read that right.
From writer/director David Robert Mitchell, this is a film with a quirky premise.
What is ‘The End of Oak Street’ about?
Hathaway and McGregor play a married couple leaving a conventional family life with their teenage son and daughter in 1980s American suburbia.
However, their lives are turned upside down when Oak Street, their neighbourhood, is transported somewhere by a cosmic event.
This is introduced in the trailer when the son of the film’s central family quizzes everyone at breakfast about a peculiar bright light outside in the middle of the night.
As the trailer continues, it becomes apparent that Oak Street has been transported back in time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and the neighbourhood is under siege by prehistoric predators.
Hathaway and McGregor’s family unit must work together to survive, while the rest of their neighbours become desperate prey.
The trailer shows several scenes reminiscent of Jurassic Park, with humans hiding and dinosaurs stalking, albeit in an aesthetic more familiar to Stranger Things fans.
Talk about thematic genre blending.
Who is David Robert Mitchell?
What makes The End of Oak Street even more intriguing is the lead creative behind the film.
It will be no surprise that J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production house is behind this Warner Bros. flick, given his love for Spielberg-esque cinema.
However, what is interesting is that the writer/director, Mitchell, only has three previous films under his belt, and they’re all completely different.
His work begins with a 2010 debut feature, The Myth of the American Sleepover, a high school comedy.
Mitchell then turned to the world of horror in 2014, with the widely praised It Follows, where the curse to be followed by a supernatural force is passed on through sexual intercourse.
Mystery thrillers were the next source of inspiration for Mitchell when he brought Under the Silver Lake to audiences in 2018 with a twist of dark comedy.
The End of Oak Street is Mitchell’s first feature since, and sees him tackle science fiction and action-adventure.
This is also the grandest scale Mitchell has worked with when filmmaking, and certainly sets a grand stage for him to end his eight-year hiatus.
Will ‘The End of Oak Street’ be another hit for Hathaway?
It’s no surprise to see McGregor turn up in a project such as this, given how familiar his face is to blockbuster-loving audiences.
His appearances as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars franchise make him an instant draw, and perhaps give him carte blanche to pick and choose the projects that interest him most.
Hathaway is also a huge draw, and her career has spanned several genres, scopes and themes from The Princess Diaries to Interstellar and Brokeback Mountain to Colossal.
2026 is a big year for Hathaway, who has already seen A24’s pop melodrama Mother Mary and the long-awaited legacy sequel The Devil Wears Prada 2 bring her back to the big screen.
And before audiences get the chance to see her fight off dinosaurs, Hathaway is part of Christopher Nolan’s mega ensemble in The Odyssey.
That film is highly likely to draw huge numbers at the box office, and The Devil Wears Prada 2 has already grossed over $640 million worldwide.
Could The End of Oak Street keep Hathaway’s hot streak going when it releases in cinemas on 14 August?
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