‘Days of Thunder’ Sequel Coming in 2028

Tom Cruise is officially waving the green flag on the start of Days of Thunder 2.

Cruise himself formally announced the long-rumored project with a photo of himself and his surprising co-star Anne Hathaway, posed in front of a race car emblazoned with the logo of the film and its release date.

The caption reads: “Days of Thunder. Summer 2028,” suggesting they may just go the Scream route of not even changing the title of their long-awaited legacyquel and just recycling the original name for the new movie.

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In much the style of Cruise’s hugely successful Top Gun: Maverick, the new Days of Thunder will deliver a sequel to a Cruise classic nearly 40 years after the original. (Days of Thunder premiered in 1990.)

In a press release, here is how Paramount describes the new film:

Tom Cruise will return as NASCAR driver Cole Trickle and will be joined by Anne Hathaway who is set to play a team owner and engineer in the upcoming follow-up to the groundbreaking 1990 film that revolutionized cinema. Cruise will star and produce alongside Jerry Bruckheimer and Tommy Harper. Jonathan Levine is set to direct from a script by Will Staples.

The press release also adds that the movie “will be filmed for IMAX.”

Directed by Tony Scott, written by Robert Towne, the original Days of Thunder starred Cruise as Cole Trickle, a hot-shot NASCAR driver who falls for a doctor played by Nicole Kidman. Scott passed away in 2012; Towne died in 2024. The new film will be directed by Jonathan Levine, whose previous projects are mostly comedies like 50/50, The Night Before, and Long Shot. (Fun fact: Levine was born in 1976, so he was roughly 14 years old when Days of Thunder first opened in theaters.)

Top Gun was one of the biggest movies of the 1980s; Wikipedia lists it as the seventh-highest grossing film of the entire decade. Days of Thunder, which reunited Cruise and Scott, was something of a spiritual sequel to that film, but it was not nearly as successful. It was only the 12th biggest grosser of 1990, behind titles like Ghost, Pretty Woman, Home Alone, and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Will people turn out for a Days of Thunder sequel the way they turned out for Top Gun: Maverick? Cruise and company certainly hope so, of course, but I am not sure these two movies are held in similar regard.

Then again, everyone thought Cruise was crazy for making another Top Gun 35 years after the original, and thought he was similarly foolish for keeping it from going straight to streaming during Covid. Then it became the #1 movie of 2022 in theaters by an enormous margin. So maybe it’s unwise to bet against him.