While this year’s The Forever Purge had originally been promoted as the franchise’s *final* movie, creator James DeMonaco eventually walked back those statements with the suggestion that he may actually have one more Purge story in the tank.
“I think I’m going to write the next one, and if the audience wants it, we’ll do it,” DeMonaco told Daily Dead earlier this summer. “Again, I think I came up with a new way to flip the whole thing upside down, and it’ll be five years after this film, but it takes America in a whole new direction and I think it would be a very interesting place to explore.”
He teased, “It also brings back a character from the previous films, which is fun.”
That returning character, it seems, will be Frank Grillo‘s Leo Barnes, who first appeared in The Purge: Anarchy and returned in The Purge: Election Year. Speaking with The Playlist Podcast this week – an interview that was transcribed by Games Radar – Grillo suggests he’ll indeed be back for the sixth installment in the franchise, which may truly be the final Purge movie.
“We committed to doing that – Purge 6 with [James DeMonaco] directing,” Grillo tells Playlist. “It’s based on the Leo Barnes character. I’m excited. He’s going to send me the script. He just finished it. So, yeah, I’m really psyched about that. I love doing the Purge movies.”
A former Los Angeles Police Department sergeant, Leo Barnes set out on Purge Night in The Purge: Anarchy to seek revenge for the drunk driving death of his son, though he ultimately spared the life of the man responsible. In The Purge: Election Year, Barnes is the head of security for senator Charlie Roan, eventually becoming the new Director of the Secret Service.
The sixth Purge movie would presumably find Leo Barnes once again fighting for his life in a very different America, with The Forever Purge turning it into an apocalyptic landscape.