Screenplay The screenplay, written by
Rafael Moreu, is highly inspired by the
hacker and
cyberpunk subcultures. He had been interested in hacking since the early 1980s. After the crackdown in the United States during 1989 and 1990, he decided to write a script about the subculture. For research, Moreu went to a meeting organized by the New York–based hacker magazine
2600: The Hacker Quarterly. There, he met Phiber Optik, a.k.a.
Mark Abene, a 22-year-old hacker who spent most of 1994 in prison on hacking charges. The character Eugene Belford uses Babbage as a pseudonym at the end of the film, a reference to
Charles Babbage, an inventor of an early form of the computer. The fictional computer mainframe named the "Gibson" is a homage to cyberpunk author
William Gibson and originator of the term "cyberspace", first in his 1982 short story "
Burning Chrome" and later in his 1984 book
Neuromancer. The novelization of the film, written by
David Bischoff and based on Moreu's screenplay, was released on July 11, 1995, two months before the film's release.
Pre-production The cast spent three weeks getting to know each other and learning how to type and rollerblade. They studied computers and met with actual computer hackers, including
Tristan Louis,
Kevin Mitnick, and
Nicholas Jarecki. Jarecki served as a technical consultant and credits his experience on
Hackers as inspiring his later career as the screenwriter and director. Actor Jonny Lee Miller even attended a hackers' convention.
Casting According to Fisher Stevens,
Quentin Tarantino was considered for the role of The Plague.
Production The school scenes were filmed in
Stuyvesant High School and the surrounding areas in the
TriBeCa,
Battery Park City, and
East Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in November 1994. In several exterior scenes, the viewer can see the
World Financial Center. Many scenes included real school seniors as extras. The interior scenes for the Cyberdelia nightclub were filmed at the disused
Brentford Public Baths, on the outskirts of
London. Producer Ralph Winter noted, "We never knew why, but the pool was designated a historic landmark, so great care had to be taken not to damage anything and to return it to its original state." The exterior set was filmed in
Downtown Manhattan. The scenes for Ellingson Mineral Corporation were filmed on a soundstage, but the establishing shots of the company's headquarters used
One Liberty Plaza and took inspiration from that building to create the hardware behind "The Kernel". In the final shot of the building, Softley digitally added a swimming pool on the rooftop of the building. Additionally, establishing shots of the
World Trade Center and
Empire State Building were used to occasionally give the viewer a visual reminder of the city the film was set in.
Post-production Softley did not use
CGI for any of the sequences in cyberspace. He said they used "more-conventional methods of
motion control, animation, models, and
rotoscoping to create a real, three-dimensional world, because...
computer graphics alone can sometimes lend a more flat, sterile image." Shortly after the filming ended, Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie were married. They separated after a year and divorced in 1999, and remain good friends.
Marketing MGM/UA set up a website for
Hackers that soon afterwards was allegedly hacked by a group called the "Internet Liberation Front". A photograph of the film's stars Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller was doodled upon, and the words "this is going to be an entertaining fun promotional site for a movie", were replaced with "this is going to be a lame, cheesy promotional site for a movie!" The studio maintained the site during the theatrical run of the film in its altered form. The film poster shows Acid Burn and Crash Override with various words and ASCII symbols superimposed on their faces, with the words: • Lord Nikon, Acid Burn, and Crash Override • God, Sex, Love, and Secret •
Phreak The text references the main characters in the film, the most commonly used passwords, and the type of user who specializes in telecommunication hacking. ==Soundtrack==