Doe first saw the original when he was in his 20s, five decades ago, and he called it"a beautiful movie with a great premise."
"It just looked cool," he added."I've watched it since then, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense – which is the big difference between that one and ours – but it was just beautiful watching San Francisco in that era, and Edmond O'Brien was just so convincing in his desperation." “[Alligators are] great metaphor. They’re really destructive, but they’re just nature, and nature will take its course.” This is actually the second remake with an Austin connection, after the 1988 version with Dennis Quaid trying to beat the clock around Central Texas. However, this time Doe, director Kurt St. Thomas, and the crew exchanged the Bay Area fog and Austin sweat of the prior versions for the sea breezes and swamp miasma of St. Augustine, Florida.