This series was originally developed in 2017 to air on AMC, with the pilot to be directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. It was announced in 2018 that it would instead be directed by Charlie McDowell and the full season would air on YouTube Premium. In 2019, almost a year after filming was completed, the series was again moved to debut on another network, this time on Showtime.
The show was initially renewed for a second season, but was later cancelled. In a statement to Deadline, Showtime said, "Last year, [we] renewed On Becoming a God in Central Florida but unfortunately, due to the pandemic, we were unable to move forward with production on the new season. The pandemic has continued to challenge schedules across the board, and although we have made every effort to reunite the cast and crew for a second season, that has become untenable. It is with great regret that we are acknowledging On Becoming a God will not return."
The second TV show in the last four years in which Kirsten Dunst stars as a woman who becomes involved with a sinister multilevel marketing scam / pyramid scheme. In the second season of Fargo (2014), Dunst played a main character who was very eager to participate in a Lifespring seminar. Lifespring was a real organization founded in the mid-1970s as an offshoot of the so-called "human potential" movement that began in the late 1960s. Starting in the late 1970s, until Lifespring disbanded in the mid-1990s, dozens of lawsuits levied a wide variety of complaints against Lifespring, ranging from characterizing it as a fraudulent pyramid scheme to holding it responsible for over two dozen participants' deaths.