Schrader told the idea to co-producer Mark Hamilburg, who liked it and paid for the brothers to write it. They spent two months watching films, in particular Toei films at a cinema in Los Angeles. "By the time I started writing, I was thinking like a Toei screenwriter," says Schrader. They wrote the script in an apartment in Venice over a month, between thanksgiving and Christmas. Schrader says Hamilburg saw the script "was going to be a hot item: the intensity with which people became interested was clear. He knew he was incapable of handling a high-level auction, so he went to Robin French" to handle the auction. French sold the script for $300,000.