Producers Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar have said the series is loosely based on the Netflix series Narcos.

Creator Karan Anshuman was a big fan of the Hinterland western genre and drew inspiration from films like Omkara and the Gangs of Wasseypur series, wanting to bring that hyper-real, violent gangster world to a streaming series set in the Indian hinterlands.

Mirzapur was developed as part of a 2016 collaboration between Amazon Studios and Excel Entertainment to create original Indian series ahead of Amazon Prime Video's December 2016 launch in India, alongside the sports drama Inside Edge.

The characters Guddu (Ali Fazal) and Bablu (Vikrant Massey) were reportedly inspired by two real boys who used to ride a bike around town terrorising people, and Guddu's look was inspired by a bodybuilder.

Vikrant Massey revealed the makers deliberately kept him in the dark about his character Bablu's death until the day of filming, in order to make audiences more curious about the character.

Filming of the first season began on 27 September 2017, with a badminton sequence as the very first scene shot; Ali Fazal and Shweta Tripathi joined the Varanasi set a few days later on 30 September.

Although set in Mirzapur and Bhadohi, the show is fictionalised and was not actually shot in the real Mirzapur; filming instead took place across Jaunpur, Azamgarh, Ghazipur, Lucknow, Raebareli, Gorakhpur and Varanasi.

For the song "Tittar Bittar," composer Anand Bhaskar brought in his entire band along with singer Isheeta Chakravarty, and lyricist Ginny Diwan reportedly wrote the lyrics in just one hour; the track is an 'item song' told from a woman's perspective during a fight scene.

In December 2021, the Allahabad High Court dismissed a criminal complaint accusing the makers of defaming the city of Mirzapur and portraying the Brahmin community negatively, citing freedom of speech and lack of malicious intent.

A film adaptation of the series was announced by Amazon MGM Studios under the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer label, with production underway since August 2025 and a theatrical release slated for 4 September 2026.