One of my biggest issues with the Purge franchise is I don’t understand why people don’t leave the country, or at least try to over the course of the 364 days that aren’t the Purge. While this may never be resolved in future sequels, the forthcoming prequel will stage this using money.

While the previous three films were shrouded in secrecy, series creator James DeMonaco has not only confirmed Purge: The Island as the title of the prequel, but also that it will take viewers back to the very first Purge!

Set on Staten Island, the film will demonstrate how the New Founding Fathers’s batshit crazy plan to rescue a dying economy turned into a national holiday in which all crime — including rape and murder — is legal for one whole night each year. He tells Vulture:

“I said it’s the first experimental Purge, which I don’t know if I was supposed to say, but now I’ve said it, so you have it,” laughed DeMonaco. “Next July 4, it’ll be coming.”

DeMonaco knew that the idea of people sticking around their neighborhood for a Purge beta-test event isolated in a single New York City borough was a big plot leap, so it came down to providing cash incentives for anyone willing to participate.

“I was wondering how you get people to stay for the first Purge, and what they do is they start monetizing it,” said DeMonaco.

“People from Staten Island can easily go to Brooklyn for the evening, so what they do is start promising very decent sums of money for the very poor people in the neighborhood. It becomes a monetization of murder and violence, incentivizing killing and keeping people around for them to be victims. So you see the inception of how grotesque the idea of the Purge is, and the manipulation upon the society.”

Adds the site, despite this dark premise, DeMonaco promised that Island, being directed by Gerard McMurray, will be the most “crowd-pleasing” of the Purge films.