carpenter had just made dark star but no one wanted to hire him as a director so he assumed that 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 him and producer debra hill to a two-picture deal the first film from this contract was the fog initially the second film that 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 that something was missing and recalls "this was basically a straight action film and at one point i realized it really doesnt 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 films ending