This was Robert Pattinson's first film he worked on after finishing shooting The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012). He stated that the experience of working with David Cronenberg and having the film premiere at Cannes made him realize that he could pursue independent projects helmed by auteur directors, because he didn't think he was good or worthy enough to act in auteur cinema before.
David Cronenberg wrote the script in six days. He has admitted that when he converted the book into screenplay format on his computer, he realized it was so perfect that his only work was to separate dialogs from narration.
In one scene, a public display shows the text, "A SPECTER IS HAUNTING THE WORLD. CAPITALISM." This is a take-off on "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of communism." which is the opening line of the political pamphlet "The Communist Manifesto", published 1848 by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Robert Pattinson confessed that doing a sex scene is "always a big thing." And while he was thrilled to get to work with the accomplished and beautiful Juliette Binoche, Rob revealed, "Juliette Binoche is one of my favorite actresses and within five minutes of meeting her we were pretending to have sex. Which wasn't in the script. That was a little awkward."
But while sometimes the chemistry is just there Pattinson didn't feel a connection with his other love interest in the film, Patricia McKenzie. "I thought that Patricia despised me. We hadn't said a word to each other apart from when I asked 'Where are you from?' and she literately looked me up and down. I was like, 'I'm not trying to do anything- I don't have any idea!' Then on the day of the sex scene she was like, 'Hey, how's it going?' I don't know what kind of preparation that was for this scene but it definitely did something."
Colin Farrell was originally cast but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with his movie Total Recall (2012). He was replaced by Robert Pattinson.