The Purge creator, James DeMonaco, has confirmed that the script for Purge 6 is complete, and will feature a "remapped" America. The Purge franchise began with writer-director DeMonaco's original film, which came out in 2013 and became an overnight success, ending up making 30 times its budget in the worldwide box office. DeMonaco, who wrote the scripts for all five movies and created the two-season television adaptation, also directed the first three movies.
The Purge films take place in a not-too-distant future where there is an annual Purge, a night where all crime is legal for 12 hours. The events of the third movie, The Purge: Election Year, saw the election of Senator Charlie Roan, who was instrumental in ending the Purge. However, the fifth film The Forever Purge, which is coming to home media on September 28, saw that decision overturned and follows the resumption of the Purge, during which a large group of vigilante Americans independently decide not to let it end at the 12-hour mark. That film ended with a group of survivors escaping into Mexico, leaving behind a war-ravaged United States.
While a Purge 6 has not been officially confirmed, franchise star, Frank Grillo has recently spoken about his involvement in the nascent project, reprising the role of Leo Barnes from The Purge: Anarchy and Election Year. Speaking with Comicbook.com, James DeMonaco has doubled down on these rumors by confirming that the script for the sequel is complete. The film would follow The Forever Purge by "about 10 to 15 years" and feature a "very changed surface of America" that has been "remapped." Read what DeMonaco said below:
I can't say much, but you're definitely [right to reference Escape from New York]. It’s definitely, I'll say this: the America that we enter into in Purge 6 is not the America we now live in. It's been remapped, I should say, in a unique way. And we're entering into this very changed surface of America. And the other thing I can say, because I think it's already out there, is that, if it happens, it is the return of Frank Grillo's Leo character, so that's fun. But it's definitely ... A new America has been formed. And after, it's about 10 to 15 years after The Forever Purge.
It makes sense that DeMonaco would take kindly to the reference to Escape from New York, a John Carpenter film in which the entire island of Manhattan has been turned into a prison for America's most hardened criminals. Science fiction has long been reimagining the political borders of the United States, from the Balkanized split countries seen in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five to The Handmaid's Tale, which features the East Coast becoming an isolated fundamentalist nation called Gilead. However, John Carpenter's vision of America is action-packed and gritty in a way that would gel perfectly with the tone of The Purge.
It seems an inevitability that a Purge 6 will get off the ground, especially with patron Purge saint James DeMonaco backing it. It will certainly be interesting to see where they go in this next chapter, which will push the speculative science fiction elements of the franchise further than they've ever been before. Whether the intervening decade will have mellowed out the rabid patriotism of The Forever Purge is unknown, though given the way the franchise has gone thus far, things aren't looking good.
Source: Comicbook.com