What Will initially thought of was just a story about the adventures of a father and son in modern times. The screenwriter Gary Weta finally moved the background of the story to 1,000 years after human beings left the earth, thus bringing science fiction elements into the film. In order to represent the Earth in the "post-human era" more realistically, Jonathan Rothbart, the visual effects director who was responsible for the design of all the images of "Avatar", and the special effects producer Jenny Fulle, the visual effects master of Creative Cartel (), using 750 sets of visual special effects to shoot, and through post-production, the special effects scenes such as the disintegrating spaceship, the galloping deer and the rapid flight between the cliffs are vividly presented come out.
In the early propaganda stage of "Return to Earth", Shamaran's name was once a selling point in the big print on the poster, but was later replaced with small print for some reason. However, Sony denied that the move was because it feared that Shamaran’s name would scare away some of the audience.
