Aug. 23 (UPI) -- USA Networks announced the premiere date for their new series Treadstone and Season 2 of The Purge on Friday. The Purge will return Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. and Treadstone will premiere after at 10 p.m. The Purge is based on the horror film franchise, and Treadstone is set in the world of the Jason Bourne movies.
Fans of the Jason Bourne movies will recognize the name Treadstone as the covert organization that programmed spies like Bourne. Producers Ben Smith and Jeffrey M. Weiner also produced some of the Bourne films. Tim Kring created the series. Kring also created the shows Heroes, Crossing Jordan and Touch.
Treadstone will follow several characters, sleeper agents activated by Treadstone as they "awaken." In The Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) had amnesia and discovered why he was trained by Treadstone. The film series attempted a spinoff, The Bourne Legacy, in which agent Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) experienced withdrawal symptoms when he lost access to Treadstone's pills.
The Bourne Legacy was not as successful as the Jason Bourne films, so Damon returned for the film Jason Bourne. A sneak peak of Treadstone shows many of the new agents in action, including women of backgrounds including Asian and black agents, so Treadstone is exploring more diverse agents than the films did.
The Purge movie franchise is four films strong with a fifth on the way. Each film tells the story of the one night a year when all crime has been made legal for 12 hours. The TV series expanded the story of a Purge night over eight episodes. USA describes The Purge as an anthology series with season two tackling different characters on a different Purge night.
However, Season 2 promises to explore "the other 364 days of the year," according to the press release. A sneak preview shows the morning after with dead bodies strewn on the street. Perhaps it is time to see if The Purge works as well as the New Founding Fathers, the film's fictional political party, claims it does. Does purging one night a year actually make the rest of the year safer?
