Tom Cruise announces sequel to once-mocked, now-loved Days of Thunder

Tom Cruise has revealed that he will star in a sequel to Days of Thunder 38 years after the debut of his motor-racing movie in 1990.

The sequel, due to hit cinemas in 2028, will also star Anne Hathaway as a team owner and engineer in the world of NASCAR (the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing).

The 64-year-old Cruise announced the project at Daytona International Speedway in Florida on Saturday, making a characteristically flamboyant entry in front of 40 race-car drivers, jumping over a row of potted plants and directly onto a stage.

Cruise will reprise the role of NASCAR driver Cole Trickle, loosely based on the late NASCAR driver Tim Richmond, in the new film, which will be written by Will Staples and directed by Jonathan Levine, with Cruise producing alongside Jerry Bruckheimer and Tommy Harper.

“It’s not just about racing,” Cruise told a packed room that included NASCAR executives, fans, corporate sponsors and military personnel.

“It’s about the community and the people here. There’s something very special about racers and the whole community. It’s a culture, and I was very proud to be able to reflect that in the first Days of Thunder , and I am honoured to share it with the world.

“That’s basically what we’re going to really go for with this one. Give the audience that opportunity to understand what it is as a team, as a community, what it is for NASCAR, and the speed, the excitement and all that danger and stuff.”

The Hollywood Reporter reported in November 2024 that Cruise had talked to Paramount about a follow-up to his racing film, which was critically panned on its release and largely lampooned throughout the NASCAR industry for its exaggeration and overindulgence.

But it has since become a cult favourite in NASCAR circles, and is still quoted by race fans to this day.

“Rubbin’, son, is racin’” – the immortal line from crew chief Harry Hogge, played by Robert Duvall – still lives on.

Riding high from his Top Gun fame and having grown up racing cars on the “back streets of Kentucky”, Cruise had an idea for a movie based on fast cars and the characters who raced them. And so began the making of Days of Thunder .

The movie introduced NASCAR to a wider audience that had very limited exposure to stock-car racing before that summer. There had been racing movies before – Thunder Road , Grand Prix , Stroker Ace or even Smokey and the Bandit – but none that had depicted NASCAR in such a mainstream style.

It’s likely that Cruise will handle many of his own stunts, as he did in the original.

“Last time I was at this track, actually, I was on the back straight, and I was shooting with two very heavy cameras travelling – I don’t know, 180 miles an hour – and suddenly the hood was off of the car,” Cruise recalled on Saturday.