Anne Hathaway will co-star with Tom Cruise in the sequel to Days of Thunder, according to Variety. Paramount Pictures announced that the film will be released on June 2, 2028. Approximately 38 years after Tony Scott’s 1990 film, Cruise will reprise his role as ambitious racer Cole Trickle. Hathaway will play a character who owns and serves as the chief engineer of a racing team. Jonathan Levine will direct the film, while Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer and Tommy Harper will serve as producers. Plot details have not been disclosed.
In the first film, Trickle joined the new NASCAR team of a retired racing legend played by Robert Duvall. Nicole Kidman, Randy Quaid and John C. Reilly were also in the cast.
Hathaway is expected to appear in theaters on October 2 with Verity: The Other Side of Truth. The actress has also completed Alone at Dawn and is working on The Princess Diaries 3. The sequel will be Cruise’s first major franchise project following Mission: Impossible. Cruise will also appear in a new Top Gun film and Digger.
Why it matters
This project stands out not only because Tom Cruise is returning to a well-known character, but also because Anne Hathaway is joining the franchise in a role that will represent the racing world not solely through on-track competition, but also from the perspectives of team management and engineering. Changes to the directing and producing team indicate that the sequel will be developed within a different creative framework years after the first film. However, the fact that plot details have not been disclosed leaves it unclear whether the story will focus on the continuity of the old characters or on a new team-centered conflict. In addition, since the news roundup contains an apparent error regarding the cast of the first film and some details reported without verification, the supplementary information needs to be assessed separately from the main announcement.
Background
Anne is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we published a news article mentioning her in the last 90 days; that article was dated August 26, 2026.