To further capitalize on the themes of the movie, theaters listed showtimes at 2:17, the same time the children in the film vanish.
Netflix was ready to pay more money upfront than New Line, but an assured theatrical release and New Line's track record with horror were the better selling points.
Zach Cregger revealed through an interview with the Associated Press that certain scenes that he thought of as "so funny" were to be cut if the jokes in question didn't elicit laughs from test audiences. "If the humor is coming from an authentic reaction that a character's having, then it works," Cregger said. "There's a lot of jokes that didn't make it into the movie that I thought were going to be so funny. And then we did a test screening, and nobody laughed and I'm like, 'okay, it's gotta go.'"
For the film's visual style, Zach Cregger was inspired by Denis Villeneuve Prisoners (2013) citing it as an influence.
"The cinematography of Prisoners is so gorgeous," Cregger told Letterboxd. He praised the "washed-out, somber, cloudy, rainy" look of the film. "I really wanted to evoke everything visually that the movie evoked," Cregger continued, revealing that he and his DP (Larkin Seiple) would watch Prisoners constantly. "It's very lived-in," he said, vowing to capture the same sense of authenticity, especially in how Villeneuve and Deakins captured the messiness of the homes and general feeling of disorganization.
According to Time Out, on the busiest days of filming, the production would be home to more than 170 children. Child labor coordinators were enlisted to keep the kids engaged when not filming.