The production company Endgame Entertainment had been working with director Rian Johnson on his sci-fi time-travel movie Looper; in 2011, Endgame brought on DMG as its partner. The movie had been slated to shoot most of its scenes in Louisiana, with a couple of weeks in Paris for idyllic flashbacks featuring the main character, Joe (actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and his wife. Now the Paris sequence was relocated to Shanghai and the Chinese actress Summer Qing was cast as Joe’s wife.

