The Purge movies have been phenomenally successful for the studio. While their budgets have increased, they are still very reasonably priced to make, with budgets ranging from $3 million for the first to $18 million for the fifth. Overall, the movies have grossed a worldwide budget of $534 million from a combined budget of $53 million. That’s a cash cow.
Now the creator of The Purge, James DeMonaco, has confirmed that he’s finished the script for a sixth entry.
The films present a seemingly normal, crime-free America in the near future. However, the country is a dystopia that observes an annual event known as “the Purge”, in which all crime, including murder, is decriminalized for a 12-hour period. The first three movies were set in this world, while the fourth went back and told a prequel story to tell the tale of the first purge.
The fifth jumped forward in time eight years after the third film when the New Founding Fathers of America, having regained control of the government, reinstated the purge, only for it to go out of control and push the US into anarchy. In his interview with The Playlist, DeMonaco gave an outline:
“I wrote the script. Universal has seen it. There are concerns about budget, but it definitely presents a fractured America … The America I present in Purge 6 is where we all are separated by ideology and sexual preference. So, the states are broken down in different ways.”
According to the interview, it features an America where the states are self-segregated. Some states are Evangelical Christian, others African American, Latino, or homosexual. So like California today?
They say this like it is a bad thing, but think of the possibilities. It means my neighbors, who have truly terrible taste in cars, could be forced to relocate to a state founded on the principles of the Fast And Furious movies. Another of my neighbors, a keen cyclist, could go and live somewhere with other cyclists, so I never need to see his flabby, middle-aged body shrink-wrapped in lycra waddling about. They could all go and teeter about on their clicky-clacky little shoes together and leave me in peace! Maybe I just hate everybody?
For sheer comedy value, we could give all the Millennials and Gen-Z a state of their own and watch them try and run it. Here is a preview:
I kid… I kid… or do I? DeMonaco continues:
“It’s written, it’s in [Universal’s] hands. I think they’re scared about the budget. But my thing was if I was going to come back and direct a sixth one, it was going to be something bigger and a little more epic in scope, with this new America I want to present and bringing back [Frank Grillo’s] character. So, it’s kinda in limbo.”
DeMonaco has another project in the pipeline while he waits for the studio to move forward with any new The Purge installment. Next up for him is the horror movie The Home. Pete Davidson stars as a graffiti artist forced to do community service at a retirement home filled with residents who may not all be quite as they seem.
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