An oral history of 'The Purge' franchise: From micro-horror breakout to Trump-era cautionary tale
When filmmaker James DeMonaco and his longtime production partner Sebastien Lemercier started working on "an X-rated treatise on violence," they had no idea they would eventually conceive of "The Purge."
"We thought it was going to be an independent Michael Haneke-type of film that would play in one theater in New York," said DeMonaco, who wrote and directed the first three movies in the ongoing "Purge" franchise.
"People were telling us it was way too anti-American," DeMonaco said of the concept set in a near-future dystopia in which a dominant ultraconservative party, dubbed the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA), has legalized all crime for one night each year. "So our original search for financing was completely independent. We had no thoughts (of) wide distribution or anything."
That all changed after the script landed on the desk of producer Jason Blum, founder and CEO of Blumhouse Productions. Blum had recently signed a three-year deal with Universal Pictures and was tasked with delivering genre movies that cost $4 million or less to make. He gave DeMonaco and Lemercier $3 million to make their film.
"It's really hard to make low-budget movies resonate, so I always told the filmmakers, 'We'll worry about a sequel if it's a hit,'" said Blum. "Once we're doing sequels, we have a piece of IP that has been proven, so we're willing to invest more. But on the first movie, we don't think about what's going to be our next."
What would come next would be three sequels and a spinoff television show in a franchise that earned more than $320 million worldwide even before the release of the fourth film, "The First Purge."
"I never thought of a franchise while I was writing or even shooting the first movie," DeMonaco said. "Until we had the crazy opening."
"The Purge" debuted in June 2013 with opening-weekend projections of $18 million to $25 million. It ended up topping the box office, grossing $36.4 million in the U.S. and Canada. And DeMonaco seized the opportunity to flesh out the concept beyond the scope of a limited budget.
"I always
