The Purge 5 Gets Summer 2020 Release Date
Get ready to Purge once again: The Purge 5 has been scheduled for a Summer 2020 release date. Created by James DeMonaco, The Purge franchise kicked off in 2013 and started as a home invasion thriller set in an alternate reality where, once a year, all crime is made legal for 12 hours. Like Universal and Blumhouse's other recent horror-thriller series, The Purge has been highly lucrative thanks to a combination of its films' small budgets and the quick turnaround between installments released over the last six years. However, unlike its peers, the property has evolved significantly since its early days.
Indeed, over the course of two sequels, a TV show, and last year's The First Purge, The Purge franchise has gone from being genre fare that offers mild social commentary to an explicit political allegory that makes clear references to events like the 2016 presidential election and subsequent rise of the Trump administration. And while these movies have never been critical darlings, their general critical reception has gotten substantially better over the years. Their global box office grosses have increased with every new film too, which is why Universal and Blumhouse have decided to go ahead and green-light a fifth Purge.
Deadline is reporting Universal and Blumhouse have set The Purge 5 to hit theaters on July 10, 2020, with DeMonaco writing the screenplay (as he did with the previous films) and an as-yet announced director calling the shots. This positions the certain-to-be R rated horror movie to serve as counter programming to both Jason Reitman's Ghostbusters sequel and Illumination's Minions 2, which opens the same day and a week earlier, respectively.
The Purge 5 plot details are being kept under-wraps for the time being, but DeMonaco previously indicated this would be the final movie in the Purge franchise. Reading between the lines, it sounds like the film will pick up after 2016's The Purge: Election Year, as opposed to being another prequel that explores how Purge Night came to be (a la The First Purge). Election Year ended with anti-Purge Senator Charlene "Charlie" Roan becoming the U.S. president, prompting the New Founding Fathers of America's supporters to stage violent uprisings in response to the development. And now that The First Purge has established just how far the NFFA will go to keep Purge Night alive as a way of controlling the masses (including, hiring mercenaries to pose as Purge participants), it stands to reason The Purge 5 will explore what happens when the group tries to overthrow Roan's administration.
It's possible The Purge 5 will go in a different direction, of course, but this seems like a fitting way to wrap up the franchise (as DeMonaco says is the plan). This approach would also allow the series to offer some ripped from the headlines political satire (especially if, say, the NFFA attempts to conspire with a foreign government to help them commit treason), and bring the property's overarching story and themes to a satisfying close. Either way, it's appropriate The Purge 5 will be arriving in the heat of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, at a time when audiences could maybe do with a political horror-thriller fantasy to let off some stream, the non-violent way.
Source: Deadline