The joke that the security guard tells his partner, about the man betting a bartender he can pee in a glass, is also featured in Robert Rodriguez' earlier film Desperado (1995) in which it was delivered by Quentin Tarantino.
In a 2023 interview with Collider, Robert Rodriguez explained the short production schedule and quick shooting style that resulted: "Originally, it was gonna be 55 days, which is pretty luxurious. It's not bad for me the way I shoot. That's a lot of time, that's good. That's about what we do on a Sin City (2005)-type movie. But because we had to shut down three times, every time we got shut down we'd have to find money in the budget somewhere, and then the easiest way to cut budget is to cut days. So I went from 55 days, then the second time it cut down to 40 days, then the second time we shut down to 34 days, but it wasn't like a 12 to 14-hour day. They were French hour, 10-hour days, which, when you change locations several times a day like we had to, that's more like a 6 to 8-hour day, so that's like a 24-day schedule.
So I had to spin it in a good way. I thought, 'Ben Affleck's gonna hate this,' and I thought, 'Wait a minute, he's from the '90s too.' So I said, 'Hey, Ben, it's gonna be like the roaring '90s, man. Remember when we started, we were shooting from the hip, indie style?' And he went, 'Yeah, I didn't think anyone shot like that anymore. I stand around a lot on sets,' and said, 'Let's do it that way.' So he was into it and we had such a blast. I think it brought an energy to it that reminded me of, 'Oh, I got the Alfred Hitchcock experience.' He (Hitchcock) was so tired of the bloated budgets and the long schedules that he said, 'Man, this TV thing is the way to go. I'm gonna take my TV crew, we're gonna shoot Psychose (1960) in black and white and shoot it fast.' So this was kind of like our Psycho [laughs].
We had to just shoot it very quick, but I think that's why it feels so fast is because we had to shoot it fast and we didn't have time to shoot extra s**t that would have just slowed the edit down. So we kind of had to just go with the essentials and cut it, and get it down to the- it's like a 90-minute movie, right? It's like 94 minutes."
Robert Rodriguez had written the initial screenplay for Hypnotic back in 2002, calling it one of his favorite stories.
Originally scheduled to be filmed in Los Angeles and throughout California in 2020, all locations were scouted and sets were built at Santa Clarita Studios when the Covid shutdown halted production and did not resume until the following year in Texas.
The first film directed by Robert Rodriguez to be primarily filmed in the anamorphic format. He previously used the format on Chapter 14: The Tragedy (2020) and Le Livre de Boba Fett (2021).
Robert Rodriguez: [family] In April 2022, Rodriguez confirmed that, similar to his previous films, he and his family members collaborated on the project. His son Rebel Rodriguez (full-time composer), Racer Rodriguez (co-writer/producer), Sid Rodriguez (special effects technician) daughter Rhiannon Rodriguez (storyboards) and his other son Rocket Rodriguez is doing the editing with Rodriguez.