Darren Aronofsky submitted a written statement about the film when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival, in which he revealed that he wrote the first draft of the script in 5 days ("a fever dream," he called it) and that the idea was inspired by current events, "the endless buzzing of notifications on our smartphones," and his experiences going through Hurricane Sandy in downtown Manhattan. "It is a mad time to be alive," he wrote. He also wrote that the film should be "drunk as a single dose in a shot glass. Knock it back."