James DeMonaco on just how much purging we can expect in The Purge TV series

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

When the upcoming TV spin-off of THE PURGE was first announced, it was reported that the series would reveal what happens the other 364 days of the year and how the Purge law affects people, implying that we wouldn't see quite as much purging as we were expecting. While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, franchise creator James DeMonaco explained that fans will still have quite a lot of Purge-related mayhem to look forward to while spilling a few additional plot-details.

I’d say it’s 70, 65 percent Purge Night and then 30 percent flashback. We follow four what-seem-to-be separate storylines of people going out on the evening and experiencing the Purge. The real estate of the 10 hours of the TV allows us to use flashback, where we flashback out of the Purge world, into the regular lives, the non-Purge days, of this future America. We get to see who these people are when it’s not Purge Night and the events that led them to where they are on the particular Purge night that we are following. I think it’s a great device. The real estate of TV lets us truly analyze why anyone would resort to violence on Purge Night. So, it’s a slower burn. Whereas the movies are kind of a punch in the face — you know, these big events — I think the TV show, with the real estate of it, allows us to truly analyze why anyone would pick up a gun or a knife to solve a problem. We really get to examine the night, and the intricacies of the evening, and the nuances of the evening, and the different kinds of people who are out on the streets in a way that I just couldn’t do in the movies.

After both writing and directing the first three movies in THE PURGE franchise, DeMonaco handed over directing duties to Gerard McMurray for THE FIRST PURGE, but he said that he's not done developing the world, not by a long shot. "About five months ago, I would have said that [I was done with the Purge movies]," DeMonaco said. "Then we started writing all these scripts for Purge TV, and I realized how many Purge stories could be told, and what it is a metaphor for, and realized, maybe not? I don’t know if I’ll direct any more but I do like still writing Purge, so I think maybe, maybe." The upcoming film prequel takes us all the way back to the beginning and shows how The Purge first began

The official synopsis for THE FIRST PURGE:

Behind every tradition lies a revolution. Next Independence Day, witness the rise of our country’s 12 hours of annual lawlessness. Welcome to the movement that began as a simple experiment: The First Purge. To push the crime rate below one percent for the rest of the year, the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) test a sociological theory that vents aggression for one night in one isolated community. But when the violence of oppressors meets the rage of the marginalized, the contagion will explode from the trial-city borders and spread across the nation.

THE FIRST PURGE will hit theaters on July 4, 2018.