'The Purge' TV Series Sneak Peek Released

USA Network and IGN have released a first look at The Purge, the upcoming 10-part TV event from USA.

In this look from the series' premiere, "What Is America?," audiences will meet a devout new cult, full of members willing to make the ultimate sacrifice - at least until they come face to face with this year's Purge night participants.

The notion makes some kind of sense: within the world of The Purge films, the idea is that The Purge is intended to let everyone get the darkness and violence inside themselves out in a relatively controlled way during a set period of time. One could argue, then, that sacrificing oneself to allow Purgers to get that release makes the country safe the rest of the time.

Of course, as seen in The First Purge, in theaters earlier this year, the underlying logic of The Purge is questionable at best and even its initial trials were a rigged game.

The series, which debuts tomorrow, released its first trailer just over a month ago.

In the world of The Purge, every year the U.S. federal government designates a "Purge Night," during which all crime is legal for 12 hours. Beginning at 7 p.m. on Purge Night and continuing until 7 a.m. the following day, mayhem descends on the country, celebrated by roving gangs with weapons and lunatics in masks while most ordinary people just try to find a way to survive the night.

The movies typically take a small group of people as the point-of-view characters in a single community, but it seems as though the TV series will be a bit broader in its scope, allowing for a deeper exploration of the world of The Purge without the need for every other scene to be a series of hyper-kinetic jump-scares.

"I'd say it's 70, 65 percent Purge Night and then 30 percent flashback," series creator James DeMonaco revealed to Entertainment Weekly. "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 Purge premieres September 4 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on USA.