Hey Tom Cruise, It's Time for 'Days of Thunder 2' and the Return of Cole Trickle

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• We can't be the only ones wishing that Tom Cruise would return to his role as Cole Trickle in a NASCAR-based Days of Thunder 2.

• The original Days of Thunder was released on June 27, 1990. It got a lot of media attention and drew significant technical support from NASCAR and its teams.

• The movie collected $160 million, more than three times its filming budget.

As expected, Top Gun: Maverick was one of the top movies of the summer of 2022.

Tom Cruise returned to his role as an elite fighter jet pilot from Top Gun, the original movie from 1986. Both movies have been praised for sensational action sequences.

This begs the question: Might Cruise return to his role as Cole Trickle in the NASCAR-based Top Gun knockoff movie Days of Thunder? Could there be Days of Thunder 2 or maybe Months of Thunder?

Auto racing fans and many movie-goers across the land will almost immediately shout, “No!” to such an audacious suggestion. Though impressive visually (the race cars looked cool, and so did Cruise and love interest Nicole Kidman), Days of Thunder was widely panned for wild inaccuracies and on-track racing sequences that were laughably overdone.

The movie was released on June 27, 1990. It got a lot of media attention and drew significant technical support from NASCAR and its teams. NASCAR allowed in-race filming at several tracks, and the movie, benefitting from the not-insignificant pull of a superstar like Cruise, showcased the sport to people who otherwise might have had little interest.

Days of Thunder essentially was Top Gun with cars instead of planes. The plot was not a carbon copy but there were many similarities.

Cruise plays Trickle, a hotshot rookie driver who arrives to stir the pot in NASCAR with the help of a veteran crew chief, Harry Hogge, played with his usual skill by the great Robert Duvall.

Kidman plays a physician who becomes involved with Cruise. It’s their first movie together, and their movie romance turned into real-life marriage (they later divorced).