You know you’ve made it as a horror franchise when you get to about the fourth or fifth film, as you’ve passed the dreaded trilogy mark and are ready for pretty much anything. The Purge franchise is one such property that’s in that sweet spot, and its next installment has just taken a big step forward towards its production cycle by hiring its director.
While franchise mastermind James DeMonaco will return to write The Purge 5’s script, it’ll be director Everardo Gout who will be helming the film. This marks the second Purge film not directed by DeMonaco, who created and oversaw the franchise as its sole director for the first trilogy’s worth of films.
Best known for directing episodes of TV shows like Luke Cage and Banshee, with more recent resume entries coming from the National Geographic series Mars and TBS’ upcoming Snowpiercer adaptation, Everardo Gout makes his leap into the Blumhouse panthenon with The Purge 5, which is the second film that’s seen a fresh face hop into the driver’s seat.
Last year’s The First Purge was the first film in the series that saw an outsider directing, with Gerard McMurray shepherding that particular film into theaters. The results, as Variety mentioned in its write up, lead to a franchise triumph, as the fourth film became the series’ highest grossing outing so far.
It’s a good sign that The Purge franchise is stronger than any one person involved, especially considering the series has had a sort of loosely bound anthology approach to most of its run. Only The Purge: Anarchy and The Purge: Election Year shared any sort of common story beats, as Frank Grillo’s character recurred in both films.
Other than that, the now famous storyline of a near-future United States partaking in “The Purge” for one night a year has been the one constant thread throughout. So while exact plot details from this new film are not revealed just yet, it’s not hard to see what the endgame will be in the proceeding.
If anything, the big questions will center around whether or not this new film is another prequel, like The First Purge, or if it’ll somehow fit into the post-election fallout that The Purge: Election Year teased in its final moments. As James DeMonaco had teased that he had the idea for the last film in mind, this could very well be the last showdown in the world of this infamous governmental tradition.
As The Purge 5 now exists in a world where both a theatrical and televised component are at work in the franchise, what with the USA Network series coming back for another season of murderous delight, it’s probably a good idea to hire someone like Everadro Gout at this juncture in the series.
With his skill set in television direction being applied to The Purge 5, there’s a good chance that his techniques could better marry the look of the films and the series to the point where their universes visually overlap. Not to mention, Gout’s TV experience will help keep the film’s shoot lean and mean, just the way that Blumhouse Productions likes it.
Nobody knows where The Purge 5 is going at this point, but just knowing that a director is mounting up to bring that film to us is exciting enough. The air will be ripe with anticipation until, out of nowhere, The Purge comes back with a new teaser trailer to fool the world into thinking everything’s business as usual; right before the bottom drops out.
The Purge 5 returns the franchise to theaters on July 10, 2020; with Season 2 of USA’s The Purge series still waiting for a premiere date this fall.
