Tom Cruise and Anne Hathaway are heading to the racetrack together, and Cruise apparently isn’t finished checking in on some of the characters who helped make him a movie star.
We already saw what happened when he went back to Maverick decades after Top Gun. Now another name from the Cruise archives is getting called back into action. Cole Trickle. Yes, a Days of Thunder sequel is coming.
Cruise will once again play the NASCAR driver from the 1990 movie, and Hathaway will be along for the ride as a team owner and engineer. Paramount made the news official at Daytona International Speedway, because really, where else would you announce this?
We’ll have to wait a while to see how it all turns out. The Days of Thunder 2028 release won’t reach theaters until June 2, 2028.
Tom Cruise and Anne Hathaway bring Days of Thunder back to the track
Back in 1990, Cole Trickle was the new guy trying to prove he belonged in NASCAR.
He could drive. Keeping all that talent under control was another matter.
Tony Scott directed the original Days of Thunder, surrounding Cruise with a cast that included Robert Duvall, Nicole Kidman, Randy Quaid and Michael Rooker.
Audiences showed up, too. The movie finished its theatrical run with roughly $82.7 million domestically and nearly $158 million worldwide.
Those numbers came from a very different era of moviegoing, so lining them up against today’s box office doesn’t tell you much. What matters more now is that Days of Thunder never really went away. It remained one of those Tom Cruise movies that people remembered even though Cole Trickle never got a second adventure. Until now.
Thirty-eight years is quite a wait for a Days of Thunder sequel.
Top Gun: Maverick changed the conversation
Of course, there’s another Cruise movie hanging over all of this: Top Gun: Maverick. It arrived 36 years after Top Gun and somehow became the biggest box office movie of Cruise’s career, topping $1.5 billion worldwide. That doesn’t mean the Tom Cruise Days of Thunder return is about to turn Cole Trickle into the next Maverick. The movies aren’t the same, and neither are the circumstances.
Tom Cruise and Anne Hathaway team up with Jerry Bruckheimer for Days of Thunder
There’s a familiar face on the producing side as well. Jerry Bruckheimer was there for the first Days of Thunder and will be back for the sequel, producing alongside Cruise and Tommy Harper. Of course, Bruckheimer also reunited with Cruise when they finally made Top Gun: Maverick, another decades-later return that worked out pretty well for everybody involved.
Behind the camera, Jonathan Levine is taking over directing duties. His previous films include 50/50 and Long Shot, while Will Staples wrote the screenplay. With Tom Cruise and Anne Hathaway leading the new Days of Thunder movie, there are already plenty of new pieces in place even with Bruckheimer returning from the original.
And nobody should expect the Tom Cruise racing movie to be treated like a modest little production. Paramount says Days of Thunder will be filmed for IMAX, with the theatrical release also planned for Dolby Cinema, 4DX and other premium formats. That’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect from Cruise by now. If he’s going to make another NASCAR movie with Hathaway, chances are he wants audiences hearing those engines somewhere considerably louder than their living room.
Cole Trickle returns in the new Days of Thunder movie
The actual story is still mostly under wraps. We don’t know where Cole has been, what puts him back around NASCAR or how Hathaway’s character becomes part of his world.
For now, that’s probably better. One of the things Top Gun: Maverick got right was allowing all those missing years to matter. Maverick hadn’t been frozen in place waiting for another movie. He had gotten older, made choices and ended up carrying plenty of history with him. Cole Trickle now has 38 years of his own to account for.
If the new Days of Thunder movie can find something worthwhile in those missing decades, maybe going around the track one more time won’t feel like going in circles.
Days of Thunder opens exclusively in theaters June 2, 2028.
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