This is the first animated feature that used Dreamworks's open-source rendering software Moonray, without the involvement of that said company. ILM: Industrial Light & Magic is the first studio to use it.
This movie was not originally planned to be an Ultraman movie. Conceived in around 2001 by Shannon Tindle under the working title "Made in Japan," it was made as a general tribute to tokusatsu (Japanese special effects) superheroes and monsters, with pretty much the same story as the finished film. In the first pitch, the hero, Gamma-Man, was normal-sized and more Super Sentai-like than Ultraman, and the baby monster Emi had a slightly different design. It was first pitched to Cartoon Network, which turned it down. In the second pitch, done 14 years later, Gamma-Man finally resembled an Ultraman-style superhero, and Emi's final design set in. It was then pitched to Sony, where, after initial development, the project fell through. Finally, just a few years later, Tindle pitched it to Netflix, which asked him if he was interested in making this project as an actual Ultraman movie. A fan of the franchise, Tindle was very interested in this prospect, and he and his team retooled it into an official Ultraman movie. After seeing the production designs (including Sunmin Inn's illustration of Ultraman cradling Emi in his hands over the ocean), Tsuburaya Productions, the creators of the Ultraman franchise, gave the project their approval, because it showed Ultraman as a nurturing character.
Originally developed at Sony Pictures Animation as a project unrelated to Ultraman.
Directorial debut of Shannon Tindle and John Aoshima.
Ultraman: Rising's secret code name during the casting process was "Gamma Man" to hide the fact it was Ultraman. "Gamma Man" was a nod to Shannon Tindle's original inception prior to project becoming Ultraman.