James DeMonaco Says Expect The Purge TV Show To Be A Slower Burn

Election Year has come and gone and Anarchy has reigned, but there’s still a future for The Purge franchise.

As was revealed earlier this year, a fourth film is heading our way under the title of The First Purge and it’ll open on July 4th. That’s not too far off now, but for fans of the horror series, there’s a lot more to look forward to than just the next big screen outing. That’s because a TV show is also in the works courtesy of USA Network and Syfy.

Hatched by franchise creator James DeMonaco and the folks at Blumhouse Television, the series will carve out a whole new chapter within America’s 12 hours of annual lawlessness, and we understand it’ll launch in tandem with the fourth movie later this year. So a late summer premiere, perhaps?

To date, everything we’ve heard about it has sounded pretty promising, with producer Jason Blum recently explaining that it’ll reveal what happens “the other 364 days of the year and how that law affects people.” This would seem to suggest that a good chunk of the show isn’t set on Purge night, something which DeMonaco recently confirmed in an interview with EW.

“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.”

Continuing on, he explained:

“The real estate of TV lets us truly analyze why anyone would resort to violence on Purge Night. So, it’s a slower burn. Whereas the movies are kind of a punch in the face — you know, these big events — I think the TV show, with the real estate of it, allows us to truly analyze why anyone would pick up a gun or a knife to solve a problem. We really get to examine the night, and the intricacies of the evening, and the nuances of the evening, and the different kinds of people who are out on the streets in a way that I just couldn’t do in the movies.”

So, it certainly sounds like the show will be a bit of a different beast than the films, but there’s still much to be excited about and fans don’t have long to wait before Blumhouse and DeMonaco welcome them back to ground zero with The First Purge (July 4th), before Syfy’s spinoff Purge TV series explores what happens on the other 364 days of the year in a society where everyone turns a blind eye to full-blown mayhem for a 12-hour period.