Get ready for another round of all-American, government-sanctioned bloodletting. The Purge 3 has just been scheduled for July 1st, 2016, in keeping with the horror-thriller franchise’s previous stake in the summer season.
That pre-Fourth of July weekend slot puts the Universal film up against some pretty stiff competition in the form of Warner Bros.’ David Yates-directed Tarzan adaptation, which stars Alexander Skarsgard and Margot Robbie; and Steven Spielberg’s The BFG, a kid-friendly adventure about a little girl (Ruby Barnhill) who is spirited away to the land of giants.
Universal has good reason to be confident in The Purge 3, though. Last year’s The Purge: Anarchy opened against star-powered comedy Sex Tape and handily crushed it, ending up grossing $110.6 million against a budget of $9 million. There’s no reason to suspect that The Purge 3 won’t open to similar numbers, especially with positive reviews for the sequel.
Details about the threequel are currently a little murky – we know that franchise mastermind James DeMonaco, who wrote and directed the first two films, is returning to pen the script, but he is not yet set to direct. We’ve also heard that Michael K. Williams and Frank Grillo may play key parts in The Purge 3, depending on where DeMonaco decides to take the story. It would make sense to focus on Williams’ revolutionary character Carmelo Johns, who was introduced in the second half of The Purge: Anarchy, and Grillo’s rising star appeal should mean that DeMonaco will want his unnamed, rough-and-tumble badass to return.
Regardless of who turns up in The Purge 3, it’s exciting to see that the franchise is continuing. The Purge did little with its intriguing premise of one night where all crime is legal, but Anarchy took the streets to show that the annual event was not only a purge of negative human emotion but also of the weak, defenseless lower-class. If The Purge 3 looks at the franchise’s mysterious New Founding Fathers a little more closely, we’ll likely be in for another thrilling, thought-provoking ride.
