Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, shot entirely within a lifeboat set with no actor ever standing up, was reportedly an inspiration for Cube's confined single-location approach.

Director Vincenzo Natali first conceived the idea for a film 'set entirely in hell' in 1990, but only completed the first script for Cube in 1994 while working as a storyboard artist's assistant at Canada's Nelvana animation studio.

The initial draft of the script had a more comedic tone with surreal images, a cannibal, edible moss growing on the walls, and a monster roaming the Cube; Natali's roommate Andre Bijelic helped him strip the idea down to people avoiding deadly traps in a maze.

Early drafts had the trapped characters as accountants or criminals serving a penal sentence, and one major change was removing food and water from the scenario to make the escape feel more urgent.

Before writing Cube, Natali made the short film Elevated, set entirely in an elevator, to show investors how Cube would hypothetically look and feel; cinematographer Derek Rogers reused strategies developed for that confined shoot on the Cube soundstage.

Each character's name references a real-world prison: Quentin (San Quentin State Prison), Holloway (HM Prison Holloway), Kazan (a Russian reference), Rennes (Centre pénitentiaire de Rennes, France), Alderson (Federal Prison Camp, Alderson), and Leaven/Worth (Leavenworth Detention Center).

Casting began among Natali's own friends, and due to budget limitations the cast only had one day of script reading before shooting began.

The film was shot in just 21 days in Toronto on a total budget of about C$700,000, half in cash and half in donated goods and services, including special effects obtained for free.

Only one cube set was actually built, with 14-foot sides and only one working door strong enough to support the actors' weight; room colors were changed by sliding colored gel panels in and out.

Because changing the panel colors was time-consuming, the film was shot out of sequence, with all scenes in a given room color filmed together regardless of story order.

The production intended six room colors to match the film's recurring theme of six, but the budget didn't stretch to a sixth gel panel, leaving the film with only five room colors plus white.

The set's warehouse was located near a train line, and the noise from passing trains was incorporated into the film as the sound of the cube rooms moving.

Actress Nicole de Boer noted that the white room felt more comforting for actors at the start of a day's filming, while the red room induced psychological effects on the cast after several hours in the confined space.

The mathematical design of the Cube was created by mathematician David W. Pravica, who served as the film's math consultant, working out the coordinate system and movement logic for the 17,576 rooms.

Cube was a commercial failure in its home country of Canada, lasting only a few days in theatres there.

French distributor Samuel Hadida's company Metropolitan Filmexport spent $1.2 million marketing the film in France, flying cast members over to meet moviegoers, helping it become the second-highest-grossing film in France that summer.

In Japan, the film became the top video rental of its time; co-writer Graeme Manson suggested Japanese audiences resonated with the film because of their familiarity with living in compact spaces.

In 2001, an industry poll conducted by Playback magazine named Cube the eighth best Canadian film of the preceding 15 years.