The script originally had two Police Officers come to James' house, but this was reduced to one after consulting Police Officer Ashley Bramley.
Hope Abbott was cast as the leader of the girls, but with no one cast for the rest of the gang, Hope volunteered to recruit from her own friends and brought along Caitlin, Eleanor, Danijela & Ella.
The Hostage was first shown as the supporting short to a screening of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) on 14th July 2016 at the Hitchin Film Festival. The evening also included an introduction and Q&A with Katharina Kubrick, who was in attendance after an invite from director Carl Thomason.
The lead male character is based, as a tribute, on a real friend of the director, his name was James Hunt. They had worked together briefly a few years earlier, but James died in 2014 at the age of 33. At the time, the story was in development, but the character's personality was still undecided, and so Carl Thomason named the lead James and gave him several lines that been heard spoken by the real James, such as calling girls "wet socks" and nicknaming his friends "Hermans", he had also scattered bird seeds on the ground in a night club to "attract some proper birds!", but it got him ejected from the club! He is also given an individual "Special Thanks" in the credits.