The idea for Hard Candy came from a news story producer David W. Higgins saw on 20/20 about young Japanese girls who would lure older businessmen to a location with the promise of meaningful conversation, only to assault and mug the men with a gang of other girls. This led him to wonder, "What if the person you expect to be the predator is not who you expect it to be? What if it's the other person?" He shared this question with writer Brian Nelson who worked out a treatment and then a script on spec, and then Higgins and Nelson approached David Slade to direct. Due to the controversial nature of the work, the budget was kept under $1 million so that the production company would not ask to change anything.[1]
Very little dubbing was used in the film, with only a couple of lines modified in post-production. Only nine minutes of music are present in the film, with ambient sounds, such as heavy breathing, making up most of the soundtrack. The film was shot in 18 days, largely in sequence, and mostly on a soundstage. Hayley wears a red hooded sweatshirt that is often seen as an allusion to "Little Red Riding Hood". However, this was a serendipitous wardrobe choice by the creative team that was not realized until later on.[1] International marketing for the film made use of this allusion. For example, a tagline on the Japanese site for the film reads: "Red Hood traps the Wolf in his own game."[4]
Jean-Clement Soret was the digital colorist for the film, this being one of the few instances in which a colorist received a spot in the opening credits.[5] The film contains many coloring effects and "density shifts" of lighting to reflect the moods of the characters. For example, when Hayley gets angry, the colors would be edited to be of lower frequency. One effect used which, as far as the director is aware, had not been done in cinema before, was to brighten the lighting in filming and correct everything down in post-production. This allowed for facial details to be visible even while having a darkened atmosphere.[1] According to the DVD extras, the process required a custom-built digital intermediate to be made and proved to be extremely difficult, with corrections having to be made frame-by-frame in some instances. This technique, known as ETTR, is a standard procedure in digital photography and cinematography to minimize the amount of noise in shadows and midtones.
Nelson's early working titles of the script were Vendetta and Snip Snip. When Higgins asked for a title with a "sugar and spice combination and a mixture of harsh roughness, innocence, and vulnerability", Nelson proposed the title Hard Candy.[5]
Elliot Page, in his memoir Pageboy, revealed that a member of the production gave him a ride home after the wrap party, and then sexually assaulted him.[6]
