Universal bumps up The Forever Purge release a week
After the studio delayed The Forever Purge a whole year from July 2020 to 2021, Universal Pictures is bringing the hit horror-thriller franchise back to fans a little sooner as the studio has bumped its release up from July 9 to July 2, just in time for Independence Day weekend.
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Though the new release date sees the film escape the competition of Marvel’s Black Widow, it does now pit the fifth and final horror outing against the family-friendly Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway and the Chris Pratt-starring sci-fi actioner The Tomorrow War, which was recently acquired by Amazon and slated for a July 2 release.
Franchise creator James DeMonaco will not be returning to the to the director’s chair for the film, which he confirmed to Entertainment Weekly in 2018 would be the finale, but will still act as screenwriter for it while Everardo Gout, award-winning director of Days of Grace, is helming.
“I think it’s a great way to end it all,” DeMonaco previously told EW. “We want to end it all, I think, in this one, and I’m very excited. 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.”
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The Forever Purge will be produced by Jason Blum, Man In A Tree duo DeMonaco and Sébastien K. Lemercier, and Platinum Dunes partners Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form and is set to star Leven Rambin (True Detective) and be helmed by Everado Gout.
The Purge series kicked off in 2013 with the first film, a smaller scale home-invasion thriller starring Ethan Hawke. It went on to gross $89.3 million worldwide and kick started the franchise, which to date has pulled in $456.8 million in worldwide grosses across four films (with the total box office grosses for each film out gaining its predecessor).