A trailer for The Purge: Anarchy reveals the premise for the sequel, this time audiences will follow characters locked out on the streets during the purge instead of safe in their homes. As reported earlier Jason DeMonaco will return from the first film as director and writer. Zach Gilford, Kiele Sanchez, and Michael K. Williams will join Frank Grillo in the cast. The release date has been pushed back a month from June 20 to July 18, 2014.
The Purge (2013) took place in a near-future America in which for one night during the year all crime is legal and all emergency services are suspended. Ethan Hawke starred as the father of an affluent family who routinely spent the purge locking down their house to avoid the carnage outside, except for one year when they let a desperate man take shelter from a mob. In Anarchy, we will likely see what would have happened to that man if he had not been allowed inside. The trailer shows our new leads trying to get home before sundown, but get stranded on a bridge as the purge begins.
The Purge: Anarchy‘s June 20 release had it sandwiched between 22 Jump Street and Transformers: Age of Extinction, both sequels to much more successful predecessors. Conversely, July is much more open, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will drop the week before but Anarchy‘s only direct competition for the adult demographic would appear to be the Wachowski’s Jupiter Rising. Universal seems confident that the phrase ‘From the creators of The Matrix‘ does not carry as much weight as it used to and Cloud Atlas‘ box office numbers appear to back up that hunch.