Set in 1955, the plot focuses on the hopes and aspirations of Frank and April Wheeler, self-assured Connecticut suburbanites who see themselves as very different from their neighbors in the Revolutionary Hill Estates. April is an aspiring actress who yearns to move to Paris, while Frank copes with toiling away at a corporate job he despises by drinking too heavily and engaging in an affair with a co-worker. The couple's marriage slowly dissolves into an endless cycle of bitter arguments and jealous recriminations.

Director John Frankenheimer considered filming the Richard Yates novel soon after its publication, but opted to make The Manchurian Candidate instead. In 1967, producer Albert Ruddy bought the property for $15,500. Five years later, while a writer-in-residence at Wichita State University, Yates offered to adapt his work for the screen. Ruddy had other projects lined up at the time and demurred, eventually selling the rights to actor Patrick O'Neal. Yates read O'Neal's treatment of his novel and found it "godawful," but O'Neal refused the writer's repeated offers to buy back the rights. Yates died in 1992, O'Neal died two years later, and the project remained in limbo until David Thompson eventually purchased the rights for BBC Films. In March 2007, BBC Films established a partnership with DreamWorks, and the rights to the film's worldwide distribution were assigned to Paramount Pictures, owner of DreamWorks. On February 14, 2008, The Hollywood Reporter reported Paramount announced that Paramount Vantage was "taking over distribution duties on Revolutionary Road".

The film was shot on location in Beacon Falls, Bethel, Darien, Fairfield, Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, Shelton, Southport, Stamford, Thomaston and Trumbull (all in Connecticut), Westchester County, and various sites in New York City, including Grand Central Station, Tribeca, and Lower Manhattan.