Tom Cruise Is Making Days of Thunder Again and Anne Hathaway Owns the Team

Caption: The No. 46 Chevrolet Lumina driven by Tom Cruise’s character Cole Trickle in the 1990 film Days of Thunder. Credit: via Wikimedia Commons.

Announced by Cruise Himself

Tom Cruise announced a Days of Thunder sequel on August 29, posting a video of himself and Anne Hathaway alongside a race car with the release date attached. Paramount is titling the film simply Days of Thunder rather than numbering it. It opens June 2, 2028.

Jonathan Levine directs from a script by Will Staples. Jerry Bruckheimer, Tommy Harper and Cruise produce. Cruise returns as Cole Trickle, the role he played in the 1990 original, thirty-eight years earlier by the time the sequel reaches theaters.

Hathaway Is Not Playing the Love Interest

Hathaway plays a NASCAR team owner and engineer. That casting is the most interesting decision in the announcement, and it is a deliberate inversion of the original film’s structure, in which Nicole Kidman played the neurosurgeon treating Trickle after a crash. The 1990 film put the woman in the position of repairing the driver. The sequel puts her in the position of employing him.

Kidman married Cruise the year Days of Thunder was released and divorced him in 2001, which is a piece of history the marketing will not need to mention for audiences to remember it.

The Line About the Baby

In the announcement video, Hathaway said she would “have this baby and then we are going to make this movie.” She is expecting her third child at 43, which she confirmed separately earlier this month.

Actors of her standing usually let a pregnancy sit outside the professional announcement entirely. Putting it inside the same video is a small thing that does a large amount of work, in that it schedules the film publicly around her rather than around the franchise.

Why Paramount Wants It

Cruise has spent the last decade rebuilding older properties into events rather than starting new ones, and Top Gun: Maverick established the template: bring back the original character, take the practical-effects approach seriously, and let the audience’s memory of the first film do the marketing. Days of Thunder is the most obvious remaining title in his catalog to receive that treatment.

Two Years Out

June 2028 is a long runway, and release dates move. What is fixed is the pairing, which is the first time Cruise and Hathaway have worked together, and a role for Hathaway with authority written into it rather than proximity to the lead.

References: Anne Hathaway Joins Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder 2, Release Date Set | Tom Cruise’s ‘Days of Thunder’ Sequel Adds Anne Hathaway To Cast | Anne Hathaway announces she is pregnant with her third child