A surprisingly sustainable horror series, The Purge movies haven’t exactly been critical darlings, but all four of the franchise’s cinematic releases have proven highly profitable, grossing a total of over $329 million worldwide against a combined budget of $37 million. What’s more, the very premise of an annual night where all crime is legal has managed to enter the fabric of modern pop culture, with even people who’ve never seen a single Purge film often knowing what the general idea is.
So perhaps it’s a natural progression that we’ll soon be getting a TV series to further flesh out the grim reality of the movies. We’ve already been treated to a pretty intense trailer for the show and now, we have a brand new image, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, which gives us another glimpse at this twisted world that continues to provide a dark mirror to our own.
That man with the 3 on his chest down below is US Marine Miguel, played by Gabriel Chavarria, who’ll be taking part in “The Gauntlet,” a dangerous competition described by the actor as “a death course of crazy things he has to go through in order to survive.”
Mind you, the show won’t consist solely of insane moments set amidst the mayhem of Purge Night, with writer James DeMonaco also exploring the activity of these characters on the other 364 days per year. A few months ago, the scribe and director of the first three Purge movies explained how he’ll be using the medium of television to offer a more fully-rounded portrayal of his characters’ lives and motivations.
“I’d say it’s 70, 65 percent Purge Night and then 30 percent flashback,” he said. “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.”
We’ll see if that approach pays off when The Purge makes its debut on September 4th. In the meantime, The First Purge is in cinemas now.