J.A. Steel told Femme Fatales magazine that she originally wrote the script with a more diverse set of characters, including a black male police captain called MacGregor and a female main character called Sanchez with martial arts skills. But when she started showing the script to development directors, they kept saying they liked it but everything was "too ethnic." One also told her to change Sanchez to a white woman with large breasts and give her fight scenes to the male characters. That's when Steel decided to finance the movie herself, though she did make Sanchez a white woman and changed her name to Jones.
During an interview, J.A. Steel said she made this film to subvert the tired mindset that women can't be action heroes and lead characters in films. But she kept getting push back while pitching it to producers. They said that when you put a woman in the role of the action hero, you are confronting the male establishment. Men go to see Stallone or Schwarzenegger so they can envision themselves as being that action hero. They can't do that with a woman lead. One producer even told her women don't go to see action films, and she said, "No, women don't go to see action films like Barbed Wire because they're insulting." Or they don't want to watch action films where women are just sexy window dressing laying around naked waiting for men to save them. Her goal with The Third Society was to prove they're wrong and women can be the heroes.