The passion of Cole Trickle: ‘Days of Thunder’ at 35

Tom Cruise reunited with the 'Top Gun' crew for the 1990 NASCAR drama.

Super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer said this week, at the premiere of F1 The Movie, that he’s working on another auto racing movie: A sequel to Days of Thunder, the 1990 film directed by Tony Scott that starred Tom Cruise as young hotshot NASCAR racer Cole Trickle.

Now, just because Bruckheimer said the film is “in the works,” doesn’t mean it’s going to happen for sure. After all, Bruckheimer just made F1, and if Cruise is in it, it’s hard to imagine a Days of Thunder sequel not having the same plot setup as F1- a former hotshot racer, now in his 60s, making one last run.

And that’s not all the DNA that F1 and Days of Thunder share. Tony Scott directed Top Gun in 1986 and Days of Thunder four years later. Joseph Kosinski directed Top Gun: Maverick in 2022 and F1 three years later. And Bruckheimer, of course, produced all four movies — the first two with his late producing partner Don Simpson — and Hans Zimmer scored all four. And F1, like Days of Thunder, begins in a race at Daytona.

A big difference? The final race in Days of Thunder only takes up about 10 minutes of screen time. In F1, it goes past the 45-minute mark.

Also, Days of Thunder seems to have credibility with NASCAR people; I’m already hearing lots of nitpicking from Formula One diehards about the new movie.

Days of Thunder arrived in theaters in June of 1990, 35 years ago next week. It arrived in the middle of productive periods for both Scott (after Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop 2, and before The Last Boy Scout and True Romance), and Cruise (right after Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July, and before Far and Away, A Few Good Men and The Firm.)

The film, set on the NASCAR circuit, helped usher in that circuit’s greatest era of mainstream popularity, which lasted throughout the 1990s.