While the 2006 film Apocalypto was made with director Mel Gibson desiring the explore another culture, his main drive had to do with his and screenwriter/co-producer Farhad Safinia's "mutual love of movies and what excites them about moviemaking". Safinia first met Gibson when he was working as an assistant during post-production of Gibson's previous film The Passion of the Christ. Safinia describes their discussions as follows:
"We started to talk about what to do next, but we specifically spent a lot of time on the action-chase genre of filmmaking. Those conversations essentially grew into the skeleton of (Apocalypto). We wanted to update the chase genre by, in fact, not updating it with technology or machinery but stripping it down to its most intense form, which is a man running for his life, and at the same time getting back to something that matters to him."
Gibson also described how they wanted to "shake up the stale action-adventure genre", which he felt was dominated by CGI, stock stories and shallow characters and to create a footchase that would "feel like a car chase that just keeps turning the screws." The result was a raw experience of a single man trying to escape captivity to make it back to his pregnant wife with nature and man hunting him like an animal. A film that kept you engaged the entire time because there were no bells or whistles. Just pure human survival. Stay tuned!