Carpenter had just made "Dark Star", but no one wanted to hire him as a director, so he assumed he would make it in Hollywood as a screenwriter. The filmmaker went on to do other films with the intention of making "Escape" later. After the success of "Halloween", Avco-Embassy signed producer Debra Hill and him to a two-picture deal. The first film from this contract was "The Fog". Initially, the second film he was going to make to finish the contract was "The Philadelphia Experiment", but because of script-writing problems, Carpenter rejected it in favor of this project. However, Carpenter felt something was missing and recalls, "This was basically a straight action film. And at one point, I realized it really doesn't have this kind of crazy humor that people from New York would expect to see." He brought in Nick Castle, a friend from his film-school days at University of Southern California, who played "The Shape" in "Halloween". Castle invented the Cabbie character and came up with the film's ending.