The Purge 6 Director Details How “Ideology, Sexuality & Religion” Will Drive Sequel’s “Remapped America”

The Purge 6 director James DeMonaco provides story details for the next installment of the franchise. The yet-untitled sixth movie in The Purge franchise will see DeMonaco, who helmed the first three installments while writing all five and creating the spinoff show, return to write and direct the horror series’ big screen return. The next installment is said to pick up a decade after The Forever Purge‘s shocking ending in which the United States is left divided, and two million Americans crossed both the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Nearly two years after the sequel was first announced to be in development, DeMonaco caught up with Collider to share new details on The Purge 6. The writer/director explained how the next installment will pick up from The Forever Purge‘s devastating ending, with America now undergoing an era of “remapping” as states separate themselves based “on ideology, sexuality, and religion.” See what DeMonaco shared in the quotes and video below:

Purge 6’ is my way of looking at the country now. I grew up watching ‘Logan’s Run’ and ‘Soylent Green’ and John Carpenter and George Romero, whose sociopolitical messaging was within the films. They were smuggling ideas into the film. So for me for 6, I was extrapolating on the discord and taking it to its furthest, as far as you can take that idea of what’s going on, I feel, in the country and the political landscape. And it’s a broken America. We’re remapping. [‘The Purge 6’] is about the remapping of America based on ideology, sexuality and religion, so that the states are broken down. You have your Black state, you have your gay state, you have your white evangelical state. And it’s really a broken country. That’s what Purge 6 is. It is this kind of broken America down in this remapping, and then they picked one state that purges still so that’s where it takes place.

Everything We Know About The Purge 6

While it looks like The Purge 6 has a well-thought-out storyline, the production process has not looked great for the sequel. The Forever Purge was initially marketed as the franchise’s last, though franchise producer Jason Blum had stated ahead of its release he would work to convince DeMonaco to return for more installments. Since then, The Purge 6 has been in development hell, with the script having said to be complete in September 2021 and DeMonaco said to be returning to direct.

After teasing his potential return months prior, Frank Grillo’s The Purge 6 return would be confirmed by DeMonaco the same year the script would be complete. Grillo, who previously starred in The Purge: Anarchy and Election Year as former LAPD Sergeant-turned-Senator Security Chief Leo Barnes, even teased this past December that the next installment would expand on his character’s development, though offered an unclear update in April that the sequel is “on the backburner” at Universal and Blumhouse.

Assuming The Purge 6 does happen, DeMonaco’s description introduces intriguing opportunities to expand the world-building of the horror-thriller universe. While The Purge franchise has always had seeds of social commentary, DeMonaco really leaned into this fact in The Purge: Election Year, which was aptly released in the same year as one of the most controversial elections in U.S. history. With The Purge 6, DeMonaco will extend this commentary, this time branching in to the issues of segregation as he envisions a re-mapped American dystopia.

Source: Collider