Many scheduled movies and series releases had been pushed back this year and now, the highly-anticipated fifth Purge installment is another on that list. The film, The Forever Purge , was scheduled for a July 10 release. However, Deadline reported this won’t be happening as expected.
While the COVID-19 pandemic was sensibly one of the reasons the July release was delayed, it’s not the only explanation. Another reason was the initial premise of the movie. The Purge series was set in a futuristic dystopian America where the “New Founding Fathers” grant the country 12 hours to murder anyone they see fit, particularly low-income, inner-city families.
In the current state of the world, where people are fearing for their lives, locking themselves away in their homes, and avoiding the mass mayhem existing outside their front doors, Blumhouse Productions CEO Jason Blum, producer of The Forever Purge alongside Universal Studios, did not think this summer was ideal for the film due to the global pandemic.
This was a similar idea for Netflix’s Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, who felt the same sentiment for Season 6 of the technology-based sci-fi thriller series.
“At the moment, I don’t know what stomach there would be for stories about societies falling apart, so I’m not working away on one of those,” he said, per The Inquisitr .
Blum made a similar initial call in 2019 when the movie The Hunt, a film about people being hunted for sport, was scheduled to release following two mass shootings in the U.S., reported IndieWire .
Another explanation for the pushback is the fact that many theaters are not open to showcase the film at all. Releasing the film via Video On Demand (VOD) or streaming platforms was an option. However, given the previous installments of the series grossed between $100 million and $300 million in theaters, it’s very unlikely a streamed version would equate to those numbers.
With the fifth film being the last installment of the lucrative series, as confirmed by the writer James DeMarco to Entertainment Weekly , Blumhouse could not take the money hit with streaming.
Though the movie was two weeks into post-production when the lockdown occurred, there are no confirmed plot lines for the fifth film. However, in 2018, DeMarco already knew what the plot would be.
“When I came up with the idea and pitched it to everybody, they seemed psyched, and I think it will be a really cool ending, how we take this one home,” he said.
At this time, no official release date has been confirmed for The Forever Purge .
