Now that a decade has passed andThe Purgefilm series is gearing up to put out its sixth installment (after a brief stint in the TV world), it’s natural that fans who revisit the movies would start wondering about thePurgetimeline. In an interview with Collider’sPerri Nemiroff,The Purgedirector and screenwriterJames DeMonacotalked a little bit about the timeline of his creation and why it might seem like a “disaster.”
ThePurgetimelinegets a little twisted thanks to some conflicting information betweenThe First Purgeand the original movie. InThe Purge: Anarchy, we learn that the sixth Purge occurs in 2023, making 2018 the year of the first nationwide Purge. However the first movie shows footage of Purges in 2018 and 2017, and the footage used for 2017 isn’t fromThe First Purge, which followed a localized experiment on Staten Island, which presumably happened in 2016. So with all of that in mind, Nemiroff asked DeMonaco: what happened in 2017? DeMonaco toldNemiroff that he’s “the first to admit the timeline is a disaster,” but he also explained why that happened:
“The timeline is such a disaster because we couldn’t go back and retroactively open up ‘Purge 1’ to change the dates when I realized, ‘Oh, I’m all off here. I can’t make this work.’ So, yes, you’re right. I always believed that the second Purge, they went from Staten Island, which was a small borough seven miles wide, I think they would go to a state Purge. So they’d pick a state, New York, Georgia.”
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The Purge Is an Ever-Expanding Event
DeMonaco went on to tell Nemiroff that one way of addressing that timeline error is to look at the Purge as an ever-expanding event. The New Founding Fathers needed thatdeadly nightto produce successful results before they could roll out the government-sanctioned violence to the entire country. However, the filmmaker admitted that dancing around the hole “doesn’t fix” it. DeMonaco said:
“[W]hen we did the TV show, I remember sitting in the writers' room and we were trying to work out the timeline, I’m like, ‘Oh dammit, I think we’re off.’ We’re all trying to fix it and saying, ‘Okay, blah, blah, blah,’ but you picked it up. Yes, that’s the issue.”
Nemiroff pointed out that this is a gap that they could possibly fill in with future movies and DeMonaco heartily agreed, saying “Exactly!”
The Purge 6is currently in early development, withFrank Grilloexpected to reprise his roleas Leo Barnes. Further details are yet to be announced, including a release date. You can watch Nemiroff’s chat with DeMonaco above and check out the trailer forThe First Purgedown below.
