Days of Thunder 2 is official: Tom Cruise and Anne Hathaway made the cast announcement from an empty Daytona Speedway
Rubbin' is racin'. Announcing is also, apparently, racin'.
Babe, wake up. Tom Cruise is a NASCAR driver again.
On Saturday, August 29, Cruise and Anne Hathaway stood on the asphalt of a completely empty Daytona International Speedway, in front of a scuffed-up lime-green stock car with "Days of Thunder" across the side, and told the internet that the sequel is real. Summer 2028. Nobody else in frame. Just the two of them and a race car in a stadium built for 100,000 people.
It was, and I say this as someone who has watched every Mission: Impossible on opening weekend, the most Tom Cruise thing I have seen him do.
The video
Hathaway is in a cowboy hat and a cream jumpsuit. Cruise is in a button-down and jeans, grinning like a man who has never once been tired. Hathaway is also very visibly pregnant, which she addressed immediately, because what else are you going to do.
"I'm gonna have this baby, then we're gonna make this movie," she said in the clip, per Rolling Stone.
Cruise agreed that this was a good plan. Baby first, then movie. The man is nothing if not a scheduler.
An A-list actress announcing a stunt-heavy racing sequel while pregnant, next to the most famous stunt maniac alive, is the correct amount of chaos for a Saturday.
The actual details
Here's what Paramount has confirmed, because there was a press release under all the vibes:
- Cruise returns as Cole Trickle, the hotshot driver from Tony Scott's 1990 original.
- Hathaway plays a team owner and engineer. So: the boss.
- Jonathan Levine (Long Shot, Warm Bodies) directs. Will Staples wrote the script.
- Cruise produces with Jerry Bruckheimer and Tommy Harper.
- It's being shot for IMAX and lands exclusively in theaters June 2, 2028.
Plot details? None. Not one. Which is fine. The plot of the first one was "handsome man drives fast and learns humility from Robert Duvall," and it made $157.9 million in 1990 dollars.
The Daytona part is the best part
Cruise didn't just show up for a photo. He was in Daytona that weekend for the NASCAR Cup Series regular-season finale and, per Motorsport.com, sat in on the drivers' meeting on Saturday night. He addressed the garage. He talked to the actual drivers about the actual movie. Kyle Busch has opinions. Everyone has opinions.
TMZ got footage of him slipping into the speedway through a VIP entrance next to a burger place. Tom Cruise, sneaking into a racetrack like a teenager, to make an announcement that could have been a tweet. I'm obsessed.
The original Days of Thunder introduced Cruise to Nicole Kidman. Whatever this sequel introduces him to, Hathaway has already made clear she's busy.
Why this actually happened
Two words: Top Gun. The Maverick sequel did $1.5 billion in 2022 and turned every dormant Cruise property into a live question. Bruckheimer had been hinting at a Days of Thunder follow-up since the F1 premiere last year, and Paramount hiring Levine earlier this summer was the tell that things were moving fast.
Hathaway, meanwhile, is coming off a summer where she had The Devil Wears Prada 2, The Odyssey, and The End of Oak Street all in theaters. She does not need this. She is doing it anyway, in a cowboy hat, and I respect it enormously.
Two years. Empty stadium. Green car. Let's go.
