{"id":584264,"date":"2026-08-29T19:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T19:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/584264\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T19:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T19:36:11","slug":"tom-cruises-days-of-thunder-sequel-set-for-june-2028","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/584264\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Cruise’s ‘Days of Thunder’ Sequel Set for June 2028"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can Tom Cruise<\/a> and Paramount Pictures<\/a> make lightning strike twice after they landed a mega hit with \u201cTop Gun Maverick?\u201d Well what comes before lightning? Thunder. <\/p>\n

Cruise has officially confirmed his sequel to the 1990 NASCAR movie \u201cDays of Thunder<\/a>\u201d at Paramount, now set for June 2, 2028, and the studio also announced that Anne Hathaway<\/a> is joining the cast. The two shared a first-look announcement image in front of a NASCAR racer with Cruise\u2019s character name, Cole Trickle. And like \u201cMaverick,\u201d the film<\/a> will be shot for IMAX. <\/p>\n

Jonathan Levine is directing the film from a script by Will Staples, and Jerry Bruckheimer and Tommy Harper are producing along with Cruise. Hathaway will portray a team owner and engineer. <\/p>\n

\"THE<\/a> \"'New<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cDays of Thunder\u201d in 1990 reunited Cruise with the late Tony Scott after \u201cTop Gun,\u201d and while you could say the film is \u201cTop Gun\u201d on wheels, the movie has its own charms and thrills. Cruise plays a hot-shot stock car driver who gets the chance to compete in the world of NASCAR. The film stars Robert Duvall, Nicole Kidman, Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes, Michael Rooker, Fred Thompson, and John C. Reilly. Cruise even got a writing credit on the project alongside the iconic Robert Towne. It made $157.9 million at the box office and was even nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound.<\/p>\n

Cruise in 2024 announced a partnership with Warner Bros<\/a>. to make \u201coriginal and franchise theatrical films\u201d for the studio, and he\u2019s got \u201cDigger\u201d coming out from Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu this fall, but it\u2019s clear he was never done with Paramount<\/a> (he narrated a sizzle reel for the studio at CinemaCon and climbed the Paramount water tower to boot<\/a>) or his stunt man bona fides for that matter, so here we are. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also gotten a handful of periodic updates about a \u201cTop Gun 3\u201d over the last few years, but this one will be next and should be just as big of a nostalgia play and legacy-quel tentpole<\/a> as \u201cMaverick\u201d was. \u201cMaverick\u201d though made $1.5 billion globally, so if \u201cDays of Thunder\u201d does even a fraction of that, it will be a smash.<\/p>\n

Hathaway meanwhile has been extremely busy this year between \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d \u201cThe End of Oak Street,\u201d \u201cMother Mary,\u201d and the upcoming \u201cVerity,\u201d based on the Colleen Hoover book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can Tom Cruise and Paramount Pictures make lightning strike twice after they landed a mega hit with \u201cTop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584265,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[69537,430,265256,156,593,111,139,69,446,7629],"class_list":["post-584264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-anne-hathaway","tag-celebrities","tag-days-of-thunder","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paramount-pictures","tag-tom-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}