For his follow-up film, Wong decided to move away from the crime trend in Hong Kong cinema, to which he felt indifferent. He was eager to make something more unusual, and the success of "As Tears Go By" made this possible. Developing a more personal project than his previous film, Wong picked the 1960s as a setting – evoking an era that he remembered well and had a "special feeling" for. "Days of Being Wild" focuses on a disillusioned young adult named Yuddy and those around him. There is no straightforward plot or obvious genre, but Stephen Teo sees it as a film about the "longing for love". Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, and Jacky Cheung rejoined Wong for his second film, while Leslie Cheung was cast in the central role. Hired as cinematographer was Christopher Doyle, who became one of Wong's most important collaborators, photographing his next six films.