It’s time to barricade your doors and head to the safe room, but that might not be enough enough because The Purge is coming directly to your home. That’s right, after three successful films, the franchise is headed to TV with a pseudo-anthology series.
James DeMonaco, The Purge’s writer, director and creator, explained to CinemaBlend that he was approached about the idea of TV series and was totally on board.
“[The series is] not an anthology… I guess kind of an anthology — more of an interwoven anthology. They came to me about a TV show, my idea is that you do six or seven story lines. And I would kind of intercut them, use flashbacks,” he said.
DeMonaco thinks a TV series will really be able to delve into the psychology behind why someone would want to participate in the purge — something the films may be lacking.
“The idea of why I like the idea of a maybe 10 hour TV thing on this, the one thing you really can’t do on the films is, just because of mere real estate and time, is you can’t get into the nuance and complexity that would drive someone to commit a terrible act on this night. Whether it’s revenge or out of passion, but what might be interesting in a TV show is with a flashback narrative, if you start on Purge Night but you go back to show how people have gotten to where they are. Where you see a couple that’s gone haywire on this night, but let’s show everything that’s led up to this moment of a husband trying to kill a wife — the cheating or the accusations of cheating or money problems. It will be interesting to show those arcs, those dramatic and complex arcs that get people to where they pick up a gun or a knife and kill someone else. I think there’s something cool that we can do with the real estate of TV — 10 hours, potentially,” he said.
The Purge might be coming to our screens sooner than we think. It’s already past the idea phase and deals are in the process of being finalized.
“They’re far ahead on the TV front… pretty far ahead. Not to get into the nuance of how it all goes down, we’re talking about deals right now, money is being spoken about. Things like that. So I think it’s being taken very seriously from the higher-ups who obviously dictate everything,” says DeMonaco.
The prospect of a The Purge TV show could go so many ways. There’s a lot of potential for it to err on cheesy, which has been an increasing issue in every film since the first. On the other hand, if DeMonaco can dive deeper into the thought process of the people who want to kill, it may turn out to have a unique emotional quality the films are lacking. With an increasing amount of violence being allowed on television (American Horror Story were truly the pioneers of bringing grotesque horror to cable), it has so much potential.
Either way, please, please let this actually happen! Purge fans, do you think this will be a good idea?
