Filmed in 1985 and slated for release in 1986 by Orion Pictures in the United States. Due to reasons unknown, this never materialized and the film was released in Europe instead. The film would make its American debut in late 1988 on Orion Home Video, capitalizing on the buzz surrounding star Melanie Griffith and her upcoming film Working Girl (1988), for which she received an Oscar nomination. Several years later, Griffith said that Cherry 2000 is her least favorite film but also acknowledged that the film enjoyed some cult status on cable.

The film takes place in 2017.

In an interview done on set and published in Starlog 109 (cover date August 1986), Melanie Griffith reveals that she was pregnant with her first child when she tested for this movie. She was hired with a clause in her contract that if she did not have the baby by September 9, her role would be recast. Her son Alexander (with her then husband Steven Bauer) was born August 22, 1985, and Griffith started the film three weeks later, taking the boy along to the set each day to breastfeed him.

In the late 1980s, the record label Varese Sarabande issued a special limited edition soundtrack CD for this film of about 1500 copies containing the late Basil Poledouris' musical score. It received high collectible status soon afterwards. In 1997, an anonymous collector purchased this CD for the then record sum for a CD of two thousand five hundred dollars in an auction. The soundtrack has since been reissued through another label in 2004.

" Cherry 2000" was the ninth movie to co-star Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr.

Kevin Costner was offered a role in this film, but dropped out, as he already had commitments to make Silverado (1985).

The first of two times that David Andrews appears in a movie about artificial intelligence. He would do so again in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003).

The scene where Sam drives his yellow Trihawk 304 three-wheeled car to the Glory Hole Hotel features a very inside joke. As he stops the car, he parks next to a broken-down yellow Renault Le-Car with a rocket launcher mounted on the roof. Hawk Vehicles, Inc. used the suspension from the Le-Car and steering from another Renault model in the production of the Trihawk 304.

Michael C. Gwynne (Slim) previously played Dr. Parker in The Name of the Game: LA 2017 (1971), another dystopia set in 2017.