“The End of Oak Street” stars Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway react to the movie’s changed ending and that ‘surprise’ death

Gerrad HallSun, August 16, 2026 at 10:14 PM UTC

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Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in ‘The End of Oak Street’Credit: Warner Bros.Key Points -

Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway star as married parents of two in The End of Oak Street.

Their quaint Michigan town is suddenly transported back millions of years and is filled with dinosaurs.

The actors explain the ‘surprise’ of a character death and how the ending changed before filming began.

Warning: This article contains spoilers about The End of Oak Street.

In a movie full of ferocious dinosaurs, it was inevitable that one of the main characters wouldn’t escape the prehistoric danger.

In The End of Oak Street, from writer/director David Robert Mitchell and producer J.J. Abrams, that was Ewan McGregor’s Greg Platt, who tries to lure an allosaurus away from his wife, Denise (Anne Hathaway), who’s trapped in the corner of a porch. After she beats it with a rifle and kicks it away, Greg attacks from the front yard and seemingly makes progress — until the allosaurus roars back, snatching up Greg in its mouth and ripping off his leg before slamming him into the ground.

But the allosaurus doesn’t stop there, going in for the final kill.

McGregor admits he didn’t see it coming.

“I thought it was a surprise in the script, and I liked the idea that we lose one of the family in a moment where we don’t expect it earlier on than you expect to,” he tells Entertainment Weekly. “The making of it was intense on ropes and pulleys, and the timing of it was difficult to do. But it was also quite funny and silly. When we turned around to shoot the family’s reaction to it, I was throwing myself around [mimics being tossed around].”

“Brilliantly. Generously,” adds Hathaway. “It was amazing.”

“I haven’t seen yet somebody’s phone [recording of filming the scene], but I’m sure there is one somewhere,” he continues, laughing. “So there was a silly side to it as well. But the end result in the movie is full on. Even knowing what’s happening and what happened, I was quite surprised by it. Good, good. They did an amazing job.”

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Christian Convery and Maisy Stella in ‘The End of Oak Street’Credit: Warner Bros.

Hathaway’s Denise has to quickly rally her two children and a neighborhood girl they’ve taken in at that point, eventually leading them to a wormhole created by a ripple in the space-time continuum that transports their quaint Michigan town tens of millions of years into the past. Once they are firmly planted back in 1982, they realize they can alter the timeline and prevent what they experienced by warning residents to evacuate before the wormhole opens.

But in the process, Denise realizes that Greg must still be alive, considering their town, as they rediscover it, is untouched. So she finds the nearest pay phone and makes a call...and some 20 minutes later, Greg, who’s been delivering pizzas after losing his job, arrives at a nearby home — and the Platt family is reunited.

Hathaway says the script underwent several changes between when she signed on and when production began, and the ending is one of them.

“Greg always died in the script, but in the original movie that I signed up for, he didn’t come back. And that was something that got changed very close to the start of filming,” the Odyssey and Mother Mary star explains. “I have to give all credit to David and J.J. because they had total faith that it was the right thing to do. And they kept turning to me and I was like, ‘Guys, I was so invested in the other version. I have no way of knowing this. I’m just trusting you that this is the right thing to do.’”

How did she know the new version worked?

“When I saw the movie, I saw it with someone who had lost their father, and they burst into tears at the ending,” Hathaway recalls. “They said, ‘Actually, it’s just what I want from a movie like this, and it could only happen in a movie, and I love it.’ And so I just want to give my absolute credit and hats off to J.J. and David for coming up with that ending.”

Christian Convery, Anne Hathaway, and Maisy Stella in ‘The End of Oak Street’Credit: Daniel McFadden/Warner Bros.

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The End of Oak Street is in theaters now.

on Entertainment Weekly

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