Chan described the film as the most demanding film in his career, as he and co-screenwriters Alan Yuen and Xu Bing tried to make the film appeal to Chinese audiences. The director first filmed Barbie Shu's scenes before filming Louis Koo's portion.
A remake of the 2004 movie Cellular with some slight differences. Director Benny Chan wanted to remake the movie with Hong Kong action.
During filming, the Hong Kong Government refused to grant a permit to film a flying car scene in a busy city district, thus the filmmakers could only shift filming to the outskirts of Hong Kong, proving that they could do the same without the government's help.
When comparing his film to Cellular, Chan said that his film includes "many elements that Hong Kong action movies do best - human combat, action, flying cars",[5] though he wanted to make the characters in his film seem more real and believable.
The film began development at Warner China Film HG, the Chinese production arm of Warner Bros., who felt that a remake of the 2004 thriller Cellular would reach out to Hong Kong's cell phone user population, and decided to hire Benny Chan to develop a screenplay for the film. Chan and his screenwriters spent two years working on the script. For Connected, Chan wanted to improve on the previous film by making the characters and the situations in his remake seem more believable.