It’s dinosaur mayhem at the box office as two newcomers about the prehistoric beasts — The End of Oak Street and PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie — set out to challenge the behemoth that is Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Warner Bros. releases director David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street in 3,400 North American theaters on Friday, with the studio projecting an opening weekend in the range of $18 million to $23 million. Warner Bros. expects to add between $20 million to $25 million internationally for the sci-fi survival movie that hails from Bad Robot and carries an $80 million production budget.

Anne Hathaway continues her busy 2026, leading the cast that also includes Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. Mitchell, known for the 2014 horror hit It Follows, helmed the movie from his own script about a family in the early 1980s as they realize that their suburban neighborhood has been transported to an area with prehistoric predators.

The End of Oak Street holds an 82 percent approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. In his review for The Hollywood Reporter, chief film critic David Rooney called the movie “mindlessly entertaining in a big-dumb-fun kind of way.” At the Oak Street premiere, Hathaway expressed to THR her gratitude “that audiences want to go see original things, and this movie is really original.”

For those seeking a more family-friendly dino adventure, Paramount Pictures releases PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie in more than 3,500 locations in North America. For the third feature installment in producer Spin Master Entertainment’s animated franchise, the studio projects a domestic opening ranging in the mid-to-high teens after having already surpassed $27 million in 30 international markets. Dino Movie has a $39.5 million production budget.

Carter Young, Mckenna Grace, Terry Crews, Jennifer Hudson and Snoop Dogg are among the voice stars for director Cal Brunker’s film that sees our Paw Patrol canine heroes end up in a world containing dinosaurs. The previous sequel, 2023’s PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, opened to $22.7 million domestically in late September. Its $205 million global run improved upon the $144 worldwide total for 2021’s original PAW Patrol: The Movie, which adapted the series that first launched on Nick Jr. in 2013.

The release of a PAW Patrol movie can be counted on to increase interest in all iterations of the brand, including merchandise and streaming for the shows. PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie has earned an 85 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, with THR critic Frank Scheck writing that, “while the material is thoroughly juvenile, the films impart valuable messages to their impressionable viewers.”

Meanwhile, Spider-Man: Brand New Day will continue flying high with its third straight weekend at the top of the box office chart. Sony Pictures expects filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton’s smash hit to bring its domestic total to $700 million in the next day or so as the film looks to soon surpass the global sum of $1.9 billion that previous franchise title Spider-Man: No Way Home collected after opening in December 2021. Starring Tom Holland, Zendaya and Sadie Sink, Brand New Day has notched no shortage of records in its historic run.

Thanks to hits like Brand New Day, The Odyssey, Toy Story 5 and others, the summer box office surpassed the $4 billion mark this week, representing just the second time that the prime moviegoing season has achieved this since the COVID pandemic. (The first time was 2023, aka the summer of Barbenheimer.) This means that the all-time summer mark of $4.755 billion from 2013 could still remain within reach.

Other new theatrical options this weekend include thriller The Rivals of Amziah King, starring Matthew McConaughey, and the Kristen Stewart-led stoner comedy The Wrong Girls.

Two of Hollywood’s most powerful unions have a message for California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison: Work it out ASAP, whether in court or otherwise.

The DGA and IATSE sent a joint letter to the pair on Wednesday to “raise concerns about the potential for a prolonged timetable for the litigation” and encourage them to make nice after their legal standoff over the proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery has Ellison threatening to pull his studio out of the state completely.

At the very least, the unions — which jointly represent nearly 200,000 film and television workers across the U.S. and Canada — want the antitrust case sorted out in court sooner than the current March 2027 trial date.

“While we have been consistent in our view that mergers, such as this one, historically offer few benefits to workers, we are also particularly concerned about the negative impact a delay in the decision regarding the proposed merger will have on our members and the industry at large,” the letter reads. “We further believe the benefits and detriments of the proposed merger should be measured against the alternative outcomes if it is not approved, especially if the anti-competitive impacts of the proposed merger can be mitigated by a binding agreement.”

The unions’ letter argues that the current trial timeline would deal an irreparable blow to an already struggling domestic film and television industry, particularly in California, where production is down more than 40%.

It continues: “As our members struggle to find employment, the uncertainty surrounding the proposed merger is only making matters worse. We are aware of productions that have been put on hold or canceled altogether, leading to further reductions in available work for our members and other industry workers.”

The letter also includes a list of proposed “enforceable conditions” that would allow the merger to continue without detrimental effects on the competitive market.

The conditions are:

• The maintenance of Paramount and WBD motion picture studios as separate studios, with each studio maintaining its own production, distribution, marketing and exhibition groups as distinct divisions;
• The production and distribution by each motion picture studio of a minimum of 15 theatrical films per year with an exclusive theatrical window of at least 45 days (preferably 60 days or more) before PVOD exploitation and 120 days before SVOD exhibition;
• An agreement that Paramount and WBD will continue to license theatrical films from third parties at no less than the average percentage of films licensed from third parties over the past five years (excluding 2020 and 2023);
• The same separate operational structure for Paramount and WBD’s television studios as applied to the motion picture studios;
• The maintenance of HBO as a linear pay television channel that will continue to be available on third party platforms (e.g., MVPDs and Amazon video);
• A commitment to produce films and television shows in the United States at no less than the average percentage produced in the United States during the past five years (excluding 2020 and 2023);
• A commitment to license original content on the combined entity’s linear channels and streaming platforms from third parties at no less than the average percentage of licensed original content during the past five years (excluding 2020 and 2023);
• A commitment that Paramount and WBD will continue to be sellers in the marketplace; and,
• A commitment that Paramount will continue to be based in Los Angeles.

The message from the DGA and IATSE comes about a day after the news broke that Ellison had told senior executives that he would begin the process of moving Paramount out of California on October 1, if Bonta didn’t attempt to settle the case he’s leading with a group of 20 state AGs to block the WBC acquisition. October 1 is the day Paramount starts to accrue a so-called ticking fee of $7 million a day agreed to in the WBD deal terms if the transaction hasn’t closed by then. Paramount had previously asked the judge for a November trial date.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra have both expressed desire for a settlement as well. So far, Bonta has showed no signs of backing down, calling Ellison’s threat “another attempt to blackmail the state into letting an illegal deal through.”

The Hollywood labor unions have all expressed varying degrees of wariness over the merger. The Writers Guild of America, which is also suing to block the merger, said yesterday in a statement, “This type of behavior is precisely why the merger should be blocked.”

SAG-AFTRA has stayed quiet thus far on the latest developments, but it has publicly opposed the merger unless there are certain production guarantees.