Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton influenced 'The Purge: Election Year'

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In The Purge: Election Year (out July 1) the near-future franchise enters political-conspiracy territory for a tale in which Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost) and Kyle Secor (Homicide: Life on the Street) play rival presidential candidates. Their main policy difference? While Mitchell is agitating to end the annual “holiday” in which nearly all crimes — even murder — are legal, Secor is campaigning to maintain the status quo. After Mitchell’s character is nearly killed on Purge Night, she goes on the run with Frank Grillo’s character, “Sarge,” the hero of 2014’s second entry in the franchise, The Purge: Anarchy.

Director and Purge franchise overlord James DeMonaco wrote the script for his threequel back in 2014, before it was entirely clear who would be the main players in this year’s real-life presidential election. But the filmmaker reveals that audiences may find certain attributes of his characters rather familiar.

“Maybe, subconsciously, I knew who was in the playing field,” he says. “Little things drip into you when you’re writing or you’re on set — you’re grabbing from the ether or what’s out there in the press. I think there’s a lot of representation of everyone who’s in the game right now, from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders to John Kasich. I’d like to the audience to play with it and see who they feel is representative of the actual candidates in the real world, without me saying who’s who. I think the audience will have a lot of fun saying, ‘Oh, that reminds me of something Donald said!'”

Well, building an enormous wall would actually make sense on Purge Night.

You can see the trailer for The Purge: Election Night below.