Trivia

The real-life Gary Johnson passed away early on in production and never got to see the film. Richard Linklater only talked to him on the phone, and never got to meet him in person.

The script originally had the story taking place in Houston, since the real-life Gary Johnson was based there. However, due to Texas tax credits and other financial elements, they weren't able to shoot the film in Texas. They instead chose to set the film in New Orleans.

This movie is based on a longform narrative nonfiction article by Skip Hollandsworth, published in Texas Monthly in October 2001. This marks the second time that Linklater has made a movie based on a Texas Monthly article by Hollandsworth, the first time being Bernie (2011).

Netflix acquired the film for $20 million for release in the United States shortly after screening at the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival.

In a 2023 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Richard Linklater spoke about the origin of the film and how the project began to move forward with Glen Powell: "Like a lot of films for me, it had a super long gestation period, in that I read Skip Hollandsworth's article when it came out back in 2001. I'm friends with Skip and he has such a nose for true crime and unique characters. And this character, Gary Johnson, the undercover hitman, opened up such a fascinating world - these people who want to hire someone to kill someone. That's about as extreme as it gets in the world, right? And yet, the facts on the ground in the real-life cases were so chillingly banal. I'm the kind of person who goes to trials and watches cases, and it just fascinates me. You know, watching a murder trial and saying to yourself, 'Wow, that person really did it.' So, when I read the original article, I thought this material would be a great place for a dark comedy to take place. I had a few meetings about it over the years, but it just didn't take off as a full story - until Glen Powell called me up during the pandemic and said, 'Hey, I just read this great article about a hitman.' The article covers how Gary let off a young woman. So, when Glen and I got to talking, we thought, 'What if she called him up afterward?' We got really fascinated about what that relationship could be. The general premise and the character of Gary are based on the real guy, who passed away, sadly, just a few weeks before we went into production. But the relationship with the woman is a complete flight of fancy - which was so fun to do, because it was all so plausible. We knew Gary would have seen the girl's photo when he was doing his case research, and if she was a pretty girl, it'd probably be pretty natural that he would pick a guy who's pretty cool when he's developing his undercover persona for her case. But then, if they have a connection and she calls him up later, he'd be stuck in that undercover persona when he wants to see her again. So, the story could become this whole question about identity. The real Gary was also a professor who lectured on psychology, so there was a natural way to explore some of these things that interested us. And the story offered a lot of opportunities to blend genres in surprising ways."