The screenplay for this film was featured in the 2013 Blacklist; a list of the "most liked" unmade scripts of the year.
Matt Smith plays a character in this movie looking for patient zero. In his first episode on Doctor Who as the doctor, The Eleventh Hour (2010), he is hunting down Prisoner Zero.
Though Natalie Dormer and John Bradley both star in Game of Thrones (2011), they have never been in any scenes together. Dormer and Bradley will finally share the screen together in Patient Zero.
On October 18, 2013, it was announced that Mike Nguyen Le's zombie script "Patient Z" was in the bidding war between different mini-major studios to get its rights, Appian Way was about to take it to the Fox Searchlight Pictures and Syfy Films, while Warner Bros. was also in talks. Other studios in the bidding were included Silver Pictures, Davis Entertainment, Broken Road Productions, Donners' Company, Vincent Newman Entertainment and Misher Films. on October 29, 2013, Screen Gems won the bidding war from other studios and acquired the US rights to the film titled "Patient Zero".
Fourth collaboration between Stanley Tucci and Natalie Dormer. The first three times were in Hunger Games : La Révolte, partie 1 (2014), (and Part 2), and Captain America: First Avenger (2011), although they never appeared in any scenes together.