The Purge 5 Adds Halloween and Smallville Alums

Production is imminent on the fifth film in The Purge franchise, reportedly the final chapter in the series. The Hollywood Reporter brings word that two more cast members have just entered the fray with Will Patton (Halloween 2018) and Cassidy Freeman (Smallville, The Righteous Gemstones) joining a cast that includes Narcos: Mexico star Tenoch Huerta and Army of the Dead star Ana de la Reguera. This new chapter is set to be directed by Everardo Gout, who has directed episodes of Mars, Luke Cage, and The Terror. Official details about the film’s plot have mostly been kept closely under wraps.

The franchise explores a future in which America’s government has implemented an annual event where all violent crimes are legal. This 12-hour window is meant to not only allow citizens to tap into their bloodlust that they restrain the rest of the year, but also serves as a means of culling the population, as the poorer members of society can’t afford the supplies to protect themselves.

The Hollywood Reporter did note that the new film will reportedly take the series “out of its usual metropolitan setting while still dealing with class and race issues in the way the previous films have.”

The first three films in the series were written and directed by James DeMonaco, while he merely wrote The First Purge with Gerard McMurray serving as director. DeMonaco has written the script for the upcoming The Purge 5 and, while a new chapter in the series has fans excited, some reports claim that it will be the last film in the series.

“I have it in my head,” DeMonaco said in an interview last year about the franchise’s ending. “I think I’m going to write it. I think it’s a great way to end it all. We want to end it all, I think, in this one, and I’m very excited. When I came up with the idea and pitched it to everybody, they seemed psyched, and I think it will be a really cool ending, how we take this one home.”

When the franchise launched in 2013, the concept was considered a distant dystopia. In the years since its debuted, our cultural climate has changed drastically, with the events of the series feeling as though they mirror an eventual outcome.

“The Purge is a cautionary tale,” Blum said of the franchise in an interview with ComicBook.com last year. “James Demonaco and I think that The Purge would not be a great idea. So I think the closer you let in to the thinking of how it came to be and why people want it and why people don’t want it, hopefully that becomes clearer and clearer. But we don’t make the movies to push a message down people’s throat; we make the movies because it’s a fun, crazy, wild idea. But second to that, I don’t think it would be super responsible to have people walking away thinking the movies are propaganda to start a Purge in the United States because I don’t think it would be such good idea.”

The Purge 5 is slated to land in theaters on July 10, 2020.