Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway Reveal the Shockingly Different Ending ‘The End of Oak Street’ Almost Had

Summer blockbusters love to lull audiences into comfort before yanking the rug out, and ‘The End of Oak Street‘ is no exception. The dinosaur-infused sci-fi thriller from writer-director David Robert Mitchell has spent the past week dominating conversation, thanks to a jaw-dropping midpoint twist and an emotional final act that almost looked nothing like what’s currently playing in theaters.

Starring Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway as suburban parents Greg and Denise Platt, the film follows a Michigan family whose entire neighborhood gets ripped back millions of years in time, dinosaurs and all. It’s a premise that mixes Amblin-style nostalgia with genuine peril, and much of that peril lands squarely on McGregor’s character.

Now, in a new interview, McGregor and Hathaway are opening up about that gut-punch moment, along with the surprising truth that the movie’s now-famous ending wasn’t always part of the plan. Midway through the film, Greg tries to lure a rampaging allosaurus away from Denise, who’s cornered on a porch. After she fends the creature off with a rifle, Greg draws its attention himself, seemingly getting the upper hand until the dinosaur turns on him, ripping off his leg and appearing to finish the job.

McGregor admits the moment genuinely caught him off guard when he first read it. Speaking about the scene, he says he saw it as a scripted surprise and appreciated that the story chose to lose a family member earlier than audiences would expect, rather than saving it for the finale, a sentiment he shared during an interview with Entertainment Weekly. He also described the physical demands of shooting it, calling the process intense given the rig work involved, even while admitting there was a lighter, sillier side to filming the sequence.

Hathaway, for her part, jumped in to praise how her co-star sold the moment, calling his performance both generous and impressive.

Here’s where things get more interesting: Denise eventually gathers her children and a neighborhood girl the family has taken in, and together they discover a time-rippling wormhole that sends them back to 1982. Realizing they can change what happened, the group works to warn their neighbors before disaster strikes, and Denise ultimately tracks Greg down alive, delivering pizzas after having lost his job, reuniting the Platt family by the film’s final scene.

That happy reunion wasn’t always the plan. Hathaway revealed the script changed significantly between when she originally signed on and when cameras started rolling, with the ending representing one of the biggest shifts. She explained that in the original version of the story she committed to, Greg still died, but he never came back, a detail that was altered close to the start of production.

According to Hathaway, that change required a leap of faith. She credited Mitchell and producer J.J. Abrams for their conviction that the new direction was correct, admitting she’d been emotionally invested in the darker version and had to trust their instincts going in.

That trust paid off, at least according to one particularly emotional test audience reaction Hathaway described, involving a viewer who had lost their own father and was moved to tears by the film’s final moments, telling her afterward that the ending felt like something only a movie like this could pull off.

‘The End of Oak Street’ is now playing in theaters, giving audiences the chance to judge that revised ending for themselves. What do you think of how the Platt family’s story wraps up? Share your thoughts in the comments.