You may have noticed that Universal shuffled the release dates of their upcoming genre films yesterday. HALLOWEEN KILLS moved from October 16, 2020 to October 15, 2021; HALLOWEEN ENDS moved from October 15, 2021 to October 14, 2022; CANDYMAN was pushed back from September 25, 2020 to October 16, 2020; and there was one more film that got delayed: THE FOREVER PURGE, the fifth film in the PURGE franchise.
THE FOREVER PURGE was originally supposed to reach theatres tomorrow, July 10th. Instead, it will be released one year from today: July 9, 2021.
These release date changes are, of course, due to the pandemic. As Deadline explains,
With the reopening of the major circuits still in limbo with New York and Los Angeles remaining shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Universal is taking sharp precautions here: Rather than continually move movies around the calendar as exhibition’s reopening is continually delayed, they took their marquee titles and postponed them deep in the calendar; the hope being we’re OK by then. Furthermore, with feature productions not quite up and ready en masse yet, 2021 will be in great need of titles.
Directed by Everardo Gout from a screenplay by franchise creator James DeMonaco (who has written every film in the series and directed the first three), THE FOREVER PURGE is said to
take Purge out of its usual metropolitan setting while still dealing with class and race issues in the way the previous films have.
Ana de la Reguera, Tenoch Huerta, Will Patton, Cassidy Freeman, and Leven Rambin star.
The film was produced by DeMonaco, Sébastien K. Lemercier, Jason Blum, Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form.