When Sally (Toni Collette) returns home and looks into a reference book she looks at an article on Leopold and Loeb. This was a famous case from the 1920s where two fellow students from the University of Chicago decided to commit the 'perfect murder'. They were easily caught but were spared the death sentence after a highly-regarded defence from Clarence Darrow.
Writer-director Gregory Read began researching the subject as a documentary but switched when a film sales agent suggested a feature film might better suit the material. This is how, in the mid-1990s, Read found himself on an enticingly arcane reading trail from the medieval history that was to pervade his lead character's imaginations and the world of his film to-be, to contemporary psychology and forensics.
The story kernel for this psychological drama first occurred to writer-director Gregory Read as a documentary idea. Always fascinated by the notion of what makes people tick and how people construct their own reality, Read became intrigued by "what it takes to create someone like a Ted Bundy (the notorious American serial killer). What were they like before they became killers? What were they like at 12 or 13 years old - or 17 ?".
The "Maraclea" is a Knight's Templar fable from thirteenth century France which when seized on by the adolescent protagonists of this movie leads to murder and trophy-ism. Writer-director Gregory Read elaborates, as the fable goes, "Maraclea was betrothed to a Knight Templar, but died before they could wed. The Knight was so tormented by his loss he opened her grave and made love to her body. Exactly nine months later, he was summoned to the grave. On opening her coffin, he found her remains had been moved, her head had been placed below her pelvis, to sit on top of her thigh-bones which had been crossed. A voice told him to guard the skull as it would be the 'bringer of all power'. The knight took the skull and found, with the skull in a grail cup, he could defeat and slay all enemies. The idea was that the skull can possess a lot of power, but there has to be a certain process to obtain that skull. I felt this mythology would be of great interest to my psychopaths."
The film's name got re-titled from "Like Minds" in a number of territories to "Murderous Intent".