New Trailer for 2026’s Jurassic Park Replacement Confirms It’s Nailing the Franchise’s Biggest Wasted Opportunity

2026’s biggest dinosaur movie promises to do something that Jurassic Park and World movies have long threatened, but never fully delivered on. The Jurassic franchise has had plenty of ups and downs ever since Steven Spielberg’s original masterpiece released in 1993, reaching its nadir (in terms of critical and audience reception) with Jurassic World: Dominion. 2025 wasn’t exactly a huge bounce back, as Rebirth again struggled with critics and failed to reach $1 billion at the box office for the first time in the World era, but it did play better with audiences in terms of Rotten Tomatoes scores and was enough of a success to (almost certainly) get a sequel.

Still, there is a demand for dinosaur movies that can break free of some of the now-too-familiar trappings of the Jurassic Park and World movies. 2025’s Primitive War, which put dinosaurs into a Vietnam War story, wasn’t a box office hit, but did outperform almost every Jurassic movie in terms of Rotten Tomatoes audience scores. And now 2026 has something that looks considerably bigger and better: The End of Oak Street. Produced by J.J. Abrams, directed by David Robert Mitchell, and starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, it follows a 1980s family whose neighborhood is somehow transported to a prehistoric era filled with dinosaurs. Check out the official trailer below:

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The End Of Oak Street Looks Like The Dinosaur Movie We’ve Been Waiting For

The End of Oak Street trailer is great, even if there is a risk with mystery movies like this of showing too much (it’s still holding enough back for now, though that might change given how the presence of dinosaurs will help drive its box office success). It’s also, in a way, delivering the kind of story that Jurassic hasn’t done satisfyingly: dinosaurs in the real world.

While the neighborhood has been transported, we’re still going to be seeing the creatures interacting with houses and lived-in, human-filled environments in a way that something like Dominion promised and then failed to really deliver on. That should allow for some inventive set pieces and an added twist to the threat level, and the film seems to know what it’s doing there.

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It’s also clear that there is a touch of that Spielbergian magic and Amblin charm that has been missing from many of the modern Jurassic movies (though Rebirth did at least capture some of this as well), which isn’t too surprising given Abrams is producing. It does a good job of mixing the threat of the dinosaurs while keeping some things contained in the mystery box for now, and adding in some humor as well. A few of the shots, such as that opening with the dog, also feel very much like watching a 1980s Spielberg film, which is presumably exactly the intent here.

It’s always seemed strange that we haven’t had more big dinosaur movies outside of the Jurassic franchise. Of course, it’s not necessarily an easy win – 65, starring Adam Driver, went wrong a few years ago – but there is a lot of potential and room for creativity, especially when you don’t have to rely on cloning and finding another island. As an original, one-off concept, this looks like delivering a big, fun, fresh dinosaur movie that could be better than anything we’ve had from Jurassic Park and World in years.

The End of Oak Street stomps into theaters on August 14th, 2026.