As pre-production went on, the film went through several rewrites and different directors who eventually left when principal photography failed to materialize. When filming finally started, original production studio Filmpro Limited went bankrupt less than a week in, and banking firm Cinequity Corporation took over bringing two inexperienced men on board as producers. Fearing the film would fail to stand-out among the trend of “animal attack” movies coming out at the time, Cinequity rewrote the script to add supernatural elements, replaced the wrangled snakes with animatronics, and brought on-board director William Fruet in May 1981.