The announcement came from Daytona
Cruise and Hathaway revealed the film at Daytona International Speedway on August 29, standing beside a green-and-yellow stock car carrying the Days of Thunder name and a Summer 2028 message.
Paramount has since locked the film for June 2, 2028.
Cruise reprises Cole Trickle, the NASCAR driver he first played in 1990. Hathaway's character is a racing team owner and engineer. No further plot description has been released.
Hathaway is being placed inside the racing operation
That job description is more revealing than a character name would be. A team owner and engineer sits at the point where money, strategy, car development and driver management meet.
It also gives the sequel room to make Hathaway's character an active professional counterweight to Trickle rather than simply repeating the original film's romantic structure.
Paramount has not said whether she is Cole's employer, rival or something else.
Cole Trickle has been away for nearly four decades
Tony Scott directed the original Days of Thunder, which opened in 1990 and followed an aggressive young stock-car driver trying to turn raw speed into a NASCAR career.
Robert Duvall played veteran crew chief Harry Hogge, Michael Rooker was rival Rowdy Burns and Nicole Kidman starred as Dr. Claire Lewicki. Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes and John C. Reilly were also in the cast.
Jerry Bruckheimer produced that film with Don Simpson. He is back for the sequel alongside Cruise and Tommy Harper.
Jonathan Levine gets a very different kind of assignment
Jonathan Levine will direct from a screenplay by Will Staples. Levine's previous films include 50/50, Warm Bodies and Long Shot, making this a notable jump into the scale of a Tom Cruise theatrical event.
No additional returning actors have been formally announced.
That includes Nicole Kidman. The first film ends with Cole and Claire together, but Paramount has not said how — or whether — the sequel addresses that relationship.
IMAX is part of the plan before filming even begins
Variety reports that the sequel will be shot for IMAX screens and released exclusively in theaters, with Dolby Cinema and 4DX among the premium formats planned.
That language fits Cruise's recent approach to filmmaking. Top Gun: Maverick and the later Mission: Impossible movies were sold partly through their physical spectacle and premium theatrical presentation.
NASCAR offers an unusually straightforward version of the same proposition: speed, vibration, engine noise and full-size machines moving very close to one another.
Cruise wants NASCAR itself to matter
The Daytona announcement was tied closely to the racing community rather than staged as a conventional Hollywood casting reveal.
Cruise said he wants audiences to understand the team and community behind NASCAR along with the speed and danger. That suggests the movie will look beyond Cole as an individual driver and spend more time around the machinery required to put a car on track.
Former NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon has publicly been associated with discussions around the project, although no racing personalities have been confirmed as cast members.
Top Gun: Maverick is the obvious precedent, but not a guarantee
Cruise and Bruckheimer already demonstrated what an extremely late legacy sequel can become. Top Gun: Maverick arrived 36 years after Top Gun, grossed more than $1.5 billion worldwide and earned a Best Picture nomination.
Days of Thunder occupies a different place in Cruise's catalog. The original grossed roughly $158 million worldwide and developed much of its lasting reputation among motorsport fans after its initial theatrical run.
That arguably makes the new film a more interesting business bet. Paramount is not reviving a property whose sequel was guaranteed to be enormous.
It is not officially called Days of Thunder 2 yet
The project is routinely being described as Days of Thunder 2, but Paramount has not announced that as the final title.
What is official is unusually substantial for a movie still this far away: Cruise as Cole Trickle, Hathaway as a team owner and engineer, Jonathan Levine directing, Will Staples writing and June 2, 2028 reserved for release.
Hathaway has also made the immediate production schedule rather easy to understand. In the announcement video, she noted that she will have her baby first. Then they make the movie.
