Original screenplay for It Waits, by Richard Christian Matheson and Thomas E. Szollosi, was written as a spec script way back in the late 1970's. Between those years and early 2000's, several directors, including
Tobe Hooper, had tried to get the film made. And several studios as well, including Amblin Entertainment, with Steven Spielberg as a producer. In 2003, the project was re-set up by French producer
Philippe Martinez at Bauer Martinez Studios. Originally, Richard Alden was considered to star in the film, but then
Dolph Lundgren was cast instead, and with
Steven R. Monroe set to direct. The filming was planned to take place in United Kingdom and Liverpool in summer of 2003, with a $6 million budget. However, due to reported "location and budgetary issues", and apparently because a deal could not be finalized with the writers, it was canceled. Another project for Lundgren and Monroe at Bauer Martinez, "The Soul of Caleb Lee", also fell through, but Lundgren then went on to make his directorial debut for the company with the movie
The Defender (2004).
Meanwhile, another producer, Stephen J. Cannell, bought the rights for It Waits, and then did a re-write of the entire script. Cannell's changes included turning a main park ranger character from a man called Mike into a girl called Danny, and also adding a love story between her and another park ranger called Justin. Year later, in winter 2004, the movie was filmed in British Columbia, Canada, with a much lower budget of $1.2 million, and released direct to DVD in 2005.
While the final film is close to the original script by Matheson and Szollosi, it's still very different from it. Some of the bigger changes between their original script and the final film include different opening in which two poachers accidentally release a monster from its cave and then its kills them, while in the film it's few archaeology students who release it and their deaths aren't even shown. The original male character, Mike, had a dog called Phil with him, and not a pet bird like Danny does. Instead of Justin and Rick, there was only one other park ranger in the script, called Roger, who mostly talks to Mike over the radio in his ranger station tower, before monster destroys the radio later in the script, and Roger is the first one who tells Mike about some of the creepy stories about the woods. For almost the entire script and the story, Mike is all alone inside the tower, battling the monster on his own, and Phil gets killed by it early on (while Danny's bird survives in the film). The Native American teacher was not in the script, and instead there was a different character, an elderly man whom Mike met earlier in the story. This elderly man shows up later and reveals to Mike how he knows about the monster since he is a descendant of the people who originally imprisoned it. He tries to help Mike during another attack of the monster but gets killed by it, and Mike barely escapes by jumping into the lake and this is when he realizes how monster is afraid of the water. In the ending, Roger shows up in his truck and helps Mike out of the lake, but then they are both chased by the monster which kills Roger, but Mike manages to get the monster to chase him back to the cave from which it was released, and then he collapses the walls of it and traps the monster inside once again.
