Invitations to the World Premiere in Sydney, Australia on 1st February 1979 were enclosed in a plastic wallet that included a banknote, a card, a pick, hacksaw blade and hairpins.
The film is loosely based on two real-life events in which Australian Security Industry Guru turned author Devon Minchin based his novel on. They were the 1970 Sydney Armoured Car Robbery where $A587,000 was stolen from a Mayne Nickless armored van. The other was also a 1970 incident, a $A280,000 robbery where bandits impersonated policemen and broke into Metropolitan Security Services' offices.
Bryan Brown has said of this film: "It was a fun movie to do and now that we are doing quite a few crime genre movies like Chopper - Memórias de um Criminoso (2000) and Jogo Sujo (2002), it was really 'Money Movers' that first put us into that sort of territory".
In a telephone interview with Peter Malone on 15th May 1999 and published in Signis, this movie's director Bruce Beresford said of this picture: "Well, it's a pretty terrible film. Perhaps that's why it's overlooked. It was a kind of stop-gap thing. When I signed a contract to do some work with the South Australian Film Corporation, I originally signed to do a film that I never actually made for them, 'The Ferryman', a script I'd written. Then, after I'd signed, they said they didn't want to do that. I said that I understood that that's what we were going to do. They told me to have another look at my contract. They said they were going to do a film with me but not 'The Ferryman'. I re-read it and saw that this was in fact true. They had a number of other projects, none of which I liked, and we finished up with 'Money Movers' as a sort of compromise...No, nobody went to see it. I went on the opening night in Melbourne and there were three people there and me. I was sitting up the back wondering what time the session started and then the film came on. I thought, 'this is going to be a disaster'. And it was."
This movie was the first film in a three picture deal that director Bruce Beresford had with the South Australian Film Corporation. The second film was Breaker Morant (1980) whilst the third and final movie was The Club (1980).