“Days of Thunder” is getting closer to racing again, as Paramount is in talks with Jonathan Levine to direct the legacyquel to Tom Cruise and Tony Scott’s 1990 cult racing film, with the actor set to return as NASCAR driver Cole Trickle. Cruise will also produce.
Levine already has a partnership with Paramount through the upcoming football drama “Mr. Irrelevant,” which stars David Corenswet as John Tuggle, the special teams football player who was drafted by the New York Giants with the last pick of the 1983 NFL Draft and who inspired his teammates with his work ethic, even after he was diagnosed with cancer.
Will Staples, who wrote the Michael B. Jordan action movie “Without Remorse,” has penned the script for the “Days of Thunder” sequel, which has yet to receive a logline. Jerry Bruckheimer will return as producer, reuniting with Cruise as he did on “Top Gun: Maverick,” which became one of Paramount’s highest grossing films of all time.
“Days of Thunder” was intended to be a spiritual successor to “Top Gun,” reuniting the same lead actor-director-producer trio while swapping out the high octane thrills of fighter jet dogfights for the speed and competition of NASCAR. The film starred Cruise as a young racer recruited for the top flight of NASCAR, where he develops an intense rivalry with Winston Cup champion Rowdy Burns, played by Cary Elwes. Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid and Nicole Kidman also starred in the film.
Despite praise for the film’s intense racing sequences and Hans Zimmer’s score, critics deemed it inferior to “Top Gun,” and thanks in part to a budget that inflated to $60 million, the film was a box office disappointment, grossing just shy of $158 million.
Despite that, “Days of Thunder” became a cult film among NASCAR fans, and that following grew to include cinephiles after Tony Scott’s death in 2012. Now, with racing films back in the spotlight thanks to Bruckheimer’s Oscar-nominated 2025 hit “F1,” Paramount is hoping that they can make lightning — and thunder — strike twice by mining Cruise’s past for another “Maverick”-esque legacyquel.
Along with “Mr. Irrelevant,” Levine has most recently worked on Hulu’s drama series “Nine Perfect Strangers” starring Nicole Kidman. Cruise is set to star in Alejandro Inarritu’s “Digger,” which will be released by Warner Bros. in October.
Levine is repped by WME and Goodman Genow. The talks were first reported by THR.
