Todd Downing wrote the original screenplay in 2014 as a vehicle for friend Angela DiMarco. Several Seattle actors and filmmakers attended a salon-style reading in Downing's home, three years before funding was secured.
Todd Downing crafted a military background for the character of Father Felix, played by Bill Oberst Jr., gathering firsthand stories from a group of tankers who served in the Gulf War. These stories were adapted into a short monologue Downing called Oberst's "Quint speech", referring to Robert Shaw's story about the USS Indianapolis in Jaws (1975).