After Digger flopped, Tom Cruise wants to race real stock cars for Days of Thunder 2
Audiences wouldn't gamble on Digger. So Tom Cruise is going back to the one bet they never refuse: him, strapped into something that could actually hurt him.
Tom Cruise has asked NASCAR to let him race. Not a few laps for the trailer: an actual ARCA Menards Series race, the fourth tier of American stock car racing. NASCAR chief executive Steve O'Donnell let it slip at Front Office Sports' Tuned In event on 13 October 2026, and Jeff Gluck reported it the same night. Cruise, O'Donnell said, wants Days of Thunder 2 to be as authentic as possible. The request shocked him, and he was not exactly reaching for a contract:
"I'm not sure that's going to happen."
— Steve O'Donnell, NASCAR CEO, at Front Office Sports' Tuned In
Cruise is 64. His last film, Digger, has taken $35.3 million worldwide, and Warner Bros. is bracing to lose around $245 million on it, according to Variety. A reasonable man might take a quiet year. Cruise has asked for a helmet.
The safest bet in Hollywood is Cruise in real danger
Digger was the gamble: an original Alejandro González Iñárritu film with no franchise, no stunts and a climate allegory nobody could fit into a trailer. Audiences passed. So Cruise is going back to the one thing they have never turned down: watching him do something that could genuinely hurt him.
The track record is hard to argue with:
- Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015): Cruise hung off the side of an Airbus A400M as it took off, for real.
- Top Gun: Maverick (2022): the cast flew in real F/A-18s rather than in front of a green screen. It made nearly $1.5 billion.
- Days of Thunder (1990): the original made $157.9 million worldwide on a $60 million budget, with Cruise as hot-headed rookie Cole Trickle, and it is the reason NASCAR is building him more than 80 cars for the sequel, reportedly.
Read more: Tom Cruise's Digger got all the headlines — Brad Pitt's dog film got the audience
Nobody remembers the plot of Rogue Nation. Everybody remembers the plane.
That is why I think this is the most sensible decision Cruise has made in years. Not the most daring: the most sensible. Digger asked people to trust him as an actor. Days of Thunder 2 asks them to watch him not crash, and that is a deal they have accepted every single time.
NASCAR fans are already doing the maths
The racing crowd has not reacted the way O'Donnell did. On r/NASCAR, the top comment pointed out that Cruise "can't be worse than some of the other people that have raced in ARCA", and another dealt with the insurance question in one line:
"The guy hung off a cargo plane by a harness, if insurance will allow that, they can let him strap in an ARCA car."
Another top reply predicted a ratings record for a series most of the world has never heard of, if FOX shows "Tom f***ing Cruise actually racing": "It'd hit 2 Million at least."
To be fair to Cruise, he is not discovering cars last Tuesday. In the late 1980s he raced a Nissan 300ZX in SCCA events for Paul Newman's team and won at Sebring. He also reportedly earned the nickname "See Cruise Crash Again". ARCA has seen worse.
After a $245 million flop, the most bankable thing Tom Cruise owns is his own neck.
Paramount has dated Days of Thunder 2 for 2 June 2028, with Jonathan Levine directing and Anne Hathaway as a team owner and engineer. Filming has not started, and NASCAR has not said yes. If O'Donnell gives in, the man who couldn't sell a climate allegory will be selling something far easier: the chance he might not finish the race.
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