It might not have grabbed the best reviews, but there’s no arguing with the box office success of horror thriller The Purge, which parlayed a thrifty $3 million budget into a worldwide haul of more than $89 million. So we were not surprised when a sequel, currently known as The Purge 2 arrived on a list of film and TV projects announced as winning a piece of the California Film Commission’s $100 million tax credit allocation. The Grey**’s Frank Grillo is now set to star.
Produced by Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Production, the original established a dystopian world where the US government has decided to crack down on crime and poverty by establishing one night a year where the police and other emergency services take the night off, laws are suspended and citizens can essentially do as they please, including murder, as a sort of universal pressure valve. Ethan Hawke starred as a security system designer who had to protect his family from a home invasion on the titular night.
Given that – spoiler alert! – much of the original cast ended up dead, Grillo will likely be part of a story set in another corner of that world, though what exactly that will be has not been announced. We do, however know that original director James DeMonaco is back to call the shots and write the script.
Grillo is on screens now in Homefront and will next pop up in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which arrives on March 28.