"The Chase" was written and directed by Adam Rifkin, who at the time was best known for directing cult and independent films like the 1991 comedy "The Dark Backward". Rifkin conceived "The Chase" as a direct response to "The Dark Backward"s extremely poor performance at the box office. According to him, "I needed to make something that studio executives could watch and see money-making potential from. So, I wrote and directed, purposely, a really brightly lit, simplistic car crash movie that I wanted to be the polar opposite of "The Dark Backward"." Although the film was released by 20th Century Fox, it was made with a relatively small budget of "a few million dollars". As a result, Rifkin considers it an independent film rather than a studio film.