UPDATE 9/10: Another beloved IP off the plan: Paramount is developing a Hawaii Five-O movie with Spider-Man director Destin Daniel Cretton.
UPDATE: The insider’s next message is in: Paramount-WBD wants “women pictures” back — real vehicles for A-list actresses in their 40s-60s, with specs already selling.
Tom Cruise didn’t just announce a sequel at Daytona, he laid out Paramount’s whole game plan.
Fresh off announcing Days of Thunder 2 with Anne Hathaway for June 2, 2028, Cruise sat down with Pat McAfee at the track, confirmed he’s the one driving, and made the case for a Paramount that’s about to flood theaters with movies.
And following the appearance, an insider sent us a message about what’s happening behind the scenes.
“Patience, patience, there is a plan… which includes A-List actors & directors, beloved IPs, big time announcements, all-out efforts to bring people back into theaters, and plenty of surprises. They’re playing to WIN, not to serve low IQ slop,” we’re told.
“Disney & Netflix know what’s coming, and they’re doing EVERYTHING to stop it. That alone should tell you what’s coming,” said the source.
Disney And Netflix Are Trying To Stop It — By Buying Lionsgate
That second part fits exactly with what we have been reporting for months.
Back on June 29, we exclusively reported that Disney is prepping for the Paramount-WBD war, restructuring around AI, resting its damaged legacy IP, and eyeing Lionsgate before the combined company comes online with Batman, Superman, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Top Gun, and Mission: Impossible all under one roof.
Days later, insiders explained the play: Disney is targeting Lionsgate to win back the males and families that Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar lost.
And Disney isn’t alone. After losing the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery and walking away with a $2.8 billion breakup fee, Netflix is still circling Lionsgate despite its public denials, with the John Wick, Hunger Games, and Twilight library as the prize.
By August, an activist investor was telling Lionsgate’s board to pivot to AI or sell.
Which brings us to the “low IQ slop” line.
While Disney restructures around AI to make more content with fewer people, and investors warn traditional studios they are about to become “AI casualties,” the Paramount plan we keep hearing about is built on the opposite: A-list stars, beloved IP, and getting people back into theater seats.
Even the “all-out efforts to bring people back into theaters” part is already showing up, with the directors’ cuts heading to theaters, something the Star Trek 60th anniversary event just confirmed.
“No, No, I’m Driving”
As for the sequel itself, Cruise told McAfee he has been “thinking about Cole Trickle for a long time,” going back to a childhood spent racing on back streets and country roads before he even had a license — the love of the sport that led him to take the original story to producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, with Tony Scott coming aboard to direct.
Asked point blank if he’s behind the wheel this time, Cruise didn’t blink: “If I’m making a movie about airplanes, I’m flying… No, no, I’m driving.”
He also confirmed Anne Hathaway’s role as a race team owner and engineer, calling “Annie” enormously talented and crediting her character with cracking the story open: “I found a way in.”
Cruise said he’s approaching the racing footage the same way he spent years building the aerial photography for the Top Gun movies: “Those are things that I’m looking at with these cars… We’re going to be creating knowledge as we go along.”
He also promised the sequel captures what makes the sport work: “The tone of NASCAR and the tone of these films, it has a joy… They’re humorous. They’re characters in NASCAR.”
And Cruise got emotional over the original’s Robert Duvall and the late Val Kilmer, teasing, “You just see the power of those artists, and I think you’ll see how we treat it in this movie and the journey of this story.”
On Kilmer and Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise added: “He was Iceman instantly… I couldn’t ever imagine anyone else but Val playing that role.”
“Those 30 Movies Are Going To Turn Into 40”
Then came the part that ties right back to the insider.
McAfee brought up Paramount’s plan to release 30 movies a year, and Cruise raised the number: “They’re going to deliver 30 movies. It’s a community to me. It’s not an industry… Those 30 movies are going to turn into 40 movies.”
“Production begets production,” Cruise said, adding that he wants that abundance “for every writer, every director, every producer, every artist” — and for every studio, pointing to a summer that ran from Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey to Spider-Man: Brand New Day to The Devil Wears Prada 2.
McAfee also credited Cruise with standing at the front of the line telling everyone to get back to the movies when much of Hollywood was calling for the death of theaters.
First up is Digger, Cruise’s “comedy of catastrophic proportions” with Alejandro G. Iñárritu, opening October 2, a performance McAfee says Cruise’s own team is calling possibly the best of his career.
Cruise even shared how he got the character’s six-hour makeup job down to under an hour by timing every step until “every motion became like a ballet.”
And here’s the kicker: Digger is Warner Bros. and Days of Thunder 2 is Paramount, which means Cruise’s next two movies both land under the combined Paramount-WBD roof once the merger closes.
Patience. There is a plan. And Disney and Netflix wouldn’t be scrambling if it wasn’t working.
