The Purge TV Series will make all crime legal on the small screen
Deadline brings word that Blumhouse has officially launched its own independent television studio and one of their first projects will be bringing their film franchise The Purge to television. Blumhouse Television is developing a Purge TV series with Universal Cable Productions and franchise creator James DeMonaco, with the series set to air on both USA and Syfy.
Regarding the announcement, Jason Blum said: “Over the past few years, we have been working to build Blumhouse Television into an independent studio so we can have the autonomy to work with the best storytellers and give them freedom to create the best dark genre programming. It is a dream that day is here. Julian and his team at ITV are remarkable partners and we can’t wait to kick things off with The Purge and Secure and Hold. We are excited that with the launch of this new studio, we are expanding our partnership with NBCUniversal by growing The Purge franchise into a television series and are grateful for their incredible support of Blumhouse overall.”
The Purge series, a horror franchise detailing a not-too-distant-future where all crime is legal for 12 hours one day a year, first premiered in 2013 with the Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey-starring film. With a production budget of just $3 million, the film brought in over $89 million worldwide and saw two sequels debut, The Purge: Anarchy in 2014 (which brought in $111 million worldwide) and last year’s The Purge: Election Year (which gathered $118 million).
DeMonaco, who has written and directed all three films in the series, spoke to CinemaBlend last year about The Purge TV series, saying:
“The idea of why I like the idea of a maybe 10 hour TV thing on this, the one thing you really can’t do on the films is, just because of mere real estate and time, is you can’t get into the nuance and complexity that would drive someone to commit a terrible act on this night. Whether it’s revenge or out of passion, but what might be interesting in a TV show is with a flashback narrative, if you start on Purge Night but you go back to show how people have gotten to where they are. Where you see a couple that’s gone haywire on this night, but let’s show everything that’s led up to this moment of a husband trying to kill a wife — the cheating or the accusations of cheating or money problems. It will be interesting to show those arcs, those dramatic and complex arcs that get people to where they pick up a gun or a knife and kill someone else. I think there’s something cool that we can do with the real estate of TV — 10 hours, potentially.”
A fourth Purge movie is still in development as well, and is set to debut in theaters July 4, 2018.