NASCAR podcast: 2026 Coke Zero Sugar 400 race arrives at Daytona
The guys reminisce about past Daytona summer races before previewing the 2026 Coke Zero Sugar 400 and offering a winner prediction.
It’s real. It’s happening.
NASCAR is returning to the big screen.
More than three decades after the release of the original film, a sequel to the hit racing movie “Days of Thunder” has been officially green-lit. The star of the 1990 movie, Tom Cruise, shared the news in a post on X on the morning of Saturday, Aug. 29, accompanied by a photo of him and Academy Award-winning actress Anne Hathaway standing next to a stockcar on the track at Daytona International Speedway.
The car bears the Cole Trickle namerail — the name of Cruise’s character in the first film — and says “Days of Thunder” and “Summer 2028” on the side of it. The car is splashed with green and yellow, indicating a bit of an homage to the Mello Yello paint scheme that Trickle’s car raced with in the original movie.
According to a report from Variety, Paramount Pictures has dated the sequel to be released on June 2, 2028. The project will be shot for IMAX screens. Per Variety, Cruise will reprise his role as Trickle while Hathaway will play a team owner and engineer. Jonathan Levine — whose credits include “Long Shot” and “50/50” — will direct the film with Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer and Tommy Harper producing. Levine and screenwriter Will Staples attended the Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway just south of Atlanta in July.
Current NASCAR drivers are incredibly excited about the project. When rumors and reports of a sequel first started bubbling up, drivers were asked about it ahead of this year’s Brickyard 400.
“That will be something that is huge, truthfully, for the sport in general,” Chase Briscoe, driver of the No. 19 Toyota, said last month. “I’m very interested to see the filming process of it. I’m assuming they are going to have to have a car on the racetrack when we are racing. Tom Cruise does all of his own stunts, so is he going to be ripping that thing at Daytona or wherever we are at? I’m excited for that piece of it, and just excited to be a part of the process whether I am just a car on the racetrack or I have a one-liner in it. I think it will be pretty cool to be a part of that process.”
Several drivers confirmed they’ve talked with filmmakers about the project, including Denny Hamlin — driver of the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, co-owner of 23XI Racing, and this year’s regular-season champion.
“I think that there’s nothing but positives that certainly can come out of it,” Hamlin said. “Any kind of awareness you can bring to the sport, even if it’s dramatized, I think can really be a good thing. So, yeah, I’ve met with the directors and the writers, quite a bit on it, and felt like, yeah, they’re on a really fun path, and I think it’s going to be great for the screen.”
Directed by Tony Scott with an iconic score provided by Hans Zimmer, the plot of the original 1990 film begins with open-wheel driver Cole Trickle being recruited to race in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series by owner Tim Daland (Randy Quaid). To mentor stockcar racing’s brash newcomer, Harry Hogge (Robert Duvall) is lured out of retirement to be his crew chief. Trickle develops a rivalry with Rowdy Burns (Michael Rooker) and strikes up a romantic relationship with Dr. Claire Lewicki (Nicole Kidman), who treats him after a near-career-ending injury. After a series of concussions lead to Burns needing brain surgery, he asks Trickle to drive his car in the Daytona 500.
The original film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound and grossed $157.9 million worldwide against a $60 million budget. Many of the storylines, characters and scenes in the original movie were inspired by real drivers and events in NASCAR. Drivers such as Richard Petty, Rusty Wallace, Neil Bonnett and Harry Gant all appear in cameo roles.
If filmmakers want to put a current driver in the movie, Ryan Blaney seems like an obvious choice. The 2023 Cup Series champion has acting credits that includes films like “Cars 3” and “Logan Lucky,” and television shows such as “Taken,” “Spider-Man,” and “Magnum P.I.” He was also arguably the lead in the short film “NASCAR vs. Navy” released this year on Amazon Prime ahead of the street course race at Naval Base Coronado.
“I’m excited to see what they do with Days of Thunder 2 because I know they’re going to do it right. In talking with some of the writers about it, they feel really good about the direction they want to go,” Blaney said. “Mr. Cruise seems incredibly excited about doing a second Days of Thunder, so that part, I think, is going to be good.
“It’ll be fun. I don’t know. Maybe some of us will be in it. We’ll see.”
Of course, this sequel to Days of Thunder isn’t the first time Cruise has revisited and revived one of his old hit movies. In 2022, 36 years after the original film, Cruise produced and starred in a sequel to “Top Gun.” The film, “Top Gun: Maverick” was a smashing box office and critical success. It was nominated for six Academy Awards — including Best Picture — and is the highest-grossing film of Cruise’s career at $1.5 billion worldwide.
Films about racing have been successful in recent years. James Mangold’s 2019 film “Ford v. Ferrari” won a pair of Academy Awards and made $225.5 million worldwide. Last year, the film “F1” starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski — who also directed “Top Gun: Maverick” — grossed $634.1 million worldwide, was nominated for Best Picture and won Best Sound at the Academy Awards.