The Purge Creator Nearly Ended Franchise as a Trilogy

The Purge franchise has earned five films and two seasons of a TV series to date, but creator James DeMonaco recently recalled that he had toyed with concluding the series back in 2016 with The Purge: Election Year. By making some narrative tweaks to that film's original ending, the series would inspire a prequel as well as a sequel, the latter of which explored what would happen when American citizens refused to stop "purging" within the designated window of time. DeMonaco has previously confirmed that he has plans for a sixth film in the series, though due to the current writers' strike, it likely won't be moving forward anytime soon.

"[The Purge: Election Year] ends with saving a very bad man. They don't kill the senator who's running for president, or the preacher I should say. They decide not to kill," DeMonaco explained to Collider. "So there's always this decision not to kill or to save. 3 I thought was the original ending. Just do a trilogy and get out, where the Elizabeth Mitchell character becomes president, she gets rid of The Purge, and we're now in a hopeful America where The Purge is no longer. Obviously, we reversed that and she was voted out of office, and The Purge was reinstated. I don't know if you picked that up subconsciously, but we were trying to infuse some hope in this incredibly nihilistic concept."

The original 2013 The Purge featured a world in which America legalized violent crimes, including murder, for a specific 12-hour period of time. Within this unsettling premise, audiences witnessed a story unfold in which a man stumbled into the home of a wealthy family, who opted to protect the man as intruders hoped to infiltrate the home and finish the job.

After that relatively intimate story, the scope of the franchise started to expand, but DeMonaco noted that a key component in the series is to have people who could easily turn to violence instead offer up an act of kindness.

"In designing each of the films, I think I did this subconsciously at first and then we started seeing the pattern of what I was doing, was we tried to end the films in this incredibly nihilistic concept with someone saving someone's life," the filmmaker expressed. "I think 2 ends with saving not only the father who killed Leo's child in the drunk driving accident, it ends with saving Leo by two female leads."

He went on to add that these acts of kindness were key parts of the series and that he is "very aware that in the wrong hands, we always felt The Purge can turn very exploitative, could turn into some kind of torture porn or without any political messaging."

Stay tuned for updates on the future of The Purge franchise.

Do you wish the series had ended after the third film? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!