Is Cable Television Ready For ‘The Purge’ Series
With just days before the Blu-ray and DVD release of The Purge: Election Year on October 4th, the folks at CINEMABLEND had the chance to chat with director James DeMonaco about the rumors of THE PURGE coming to television.
Dude, it’s so weird you bring that up. Yes! Not an anthology… I guess kind of an anthology — more of an interwoven anthology. They came to me about a TV show, my idea is that you do six or seven storylines. And I would kind of intercut them, use flashbacks.
DeMonaco has certainly expanded the universe of THE PURGE, taking it from a house all the way to the country’s capitol. A television series would certainly expand that universe even further by introducing more characters and giving them the backstory and development they deserve. Is there a plan? Does James DeMonaco have a vision? It certainly seems like he does, as he went on to explain his idea.
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.
With the creator of the films so open and excited about the possibility of a television show, the big question for fans right now is when can we expect to see THE PURGE television show? DeMonaco expressed that it will be sooner rather than later and hints at the idea of pre-production starting, but as of yet nothing has been set in stone, nor have we heard what network is in talks.
I think the real question should be, is cable television ready for The Purge series? Granted cable has become more lax in recent years with graphic violence (oddly enough we see less in cinema these days), but what surrounds the idea of THE PURGE is the acceptance of violence in society. With all the real-life, grotesque violence we see through social media and news coverage, would a fictional show with the same likeness raise controversy? If you have checked out Modern Horrors’ review of The Purge: Election Year, then you know already my thoughts on the political wake-up call the films try to assert, and if you haven’t then click HERE to read that. What say you, horror fanatic? Will THE PURGE series be just another great conversion from cinema to television? Will it draw controversy? Or will a television series defeat the purpose of what the films were trying to say? Let us know what you think.