The container ship seen seemingly sinking in the opening monologue is the MV Rena, which ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef off the coast of New Zealand's North Island in 2011, due to a course change. The ship subsequently tilted to starboard and split in two, by which time most of the containers aft of the split (two thirds of the ship) had been removed or lost at sea. The aft two thirds of the ship, after being emptied, sheared off of the front section due to tides and bad weather, then sank beneath the surface. The front section's containers were removed, and then the rest of the ship was cut into sections to be removed by salvage.
As they were for the previous installment (Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012)), all of the roles in this movie have again been re-cast. Instead of Taylor Schilling or Samantha Mathis, Dagny Taggart is now played by Laura Regan. Instead of Jsu Garcia or Esai Morales, Francisco D'Anconia is now played by Joaquim de Almeida. Instead of Grant Bowler or Jason Beghe, Henry Rearden is now played by Rob Morrow, and so on.
Nearly half a million dollars of the film's budget was raised through the online funding site Kickstarter. This was claimed by many to be ironic, since crowd funding, or charity is in opposition to Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, but that is incorrect, as Objectivism only opposes "forced" charity.
The so-called "Taggart Bridge" is a digital composite which relies on the famous Forth Bridge in Scotland as its source.