The film premiered on March 16th, 2025 at the Providence Place Cinemas 16 & IMAX movie theater. Promoters set up a fake set resembling the secret apartment in which fans and moviegoers were allowed to explore and take pictures.
Michael Townsend and his co-conspirators filmed their exploits in setting up the mall apartment on small Pentax Optio cameras that they had purchased at RadioShack. The digital video's dimensions were only 320 x 240, and filmed at a rate of just 8 frames per second. In total, Townsend had saved 25 total hours of footage.
Ever since the secret apartment in Providence Place was discovered, many filmmakers had approached Michael Townsend for the movie rights to the story. Some filmmakers wanted to make a dramatized feature, and others wanted to make a documentary. Townsend turned down all movie offers for years. Director Jeremy Workman approached Townsend not only to tell the apartment's story in a documentary, but also to include the context of gentrification in modern cities, and other art projects on which Townsend and his team were working at the time. After hearing Workman's pitch, Townsend accepted his offer.
As shown in the film, there were a total of eight participants who secretly furnished and resided in the secret apartment. Before this film's release, Michael Townsend was the only one who was known. Director Jeremy Workman spent a total of one full year convincing the other seven co-conspirators to come forward and tell their story on camera.
Director Jeremy Workman and executive producer Jesse Eisenberg are good friends. Eisenberg had previously executive produced The World Before Your Feet (2018), which Workman directed.