According to the 25 November 1916 Motion Picture News, "At the Greater Vitagraph Studio in Brooklyn [East Fifteenth Street in Flatbush], work has already commenced upon Arsene Lupin, with Earle Williams in the title role." Paul Scardon was directing; earlier, an item in the 27 October 1916 Variety had mentioned that Marguerite Bertsch was adapting Arsene Lupin for Vitagraph and would direct, but the January 1917 Motion Picture Magazine stated that she had been moved to another project. Contemporary news items referred to the name Arsène as Arsene, without the accent.
       The February 1917 Picture-Play Magazine, despite its late date, ran an item noting that Vitagraph was making Arsene Lupin as one of its Blue Ribbon Features, with a release date set "some time in January."
       Arsene Lupin was scheduled to open at the Rialto Theatre on New York City's Broadway on 4 February 1917, according to the 10 February 1917 Motography, but was pushed back to the week of 11 February. It was set originally to be released nationally on 26 February, but held back two more weeks until 12 March 1917.
       The play was based on the novel Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc, first published in Paris in 1907. (Leblance had established the gentleman-thief character two years earlier, in short stories.) Leblanc then collaborated with French playwright Francois de Croisset on a 1908 play based upon the novel. However, a Vitagraph advertisement for the film in the 16 December 1916 Motion Picture News attributed the dramatization of the story to Paul Potter, who had written an American play based on the French character. An article in the 10 March 1917 Variety described the legal case concerning Potter's claim to the copyright of the original play. He claimed to have written it for Broadway producer Charles Frohman, basing it on Leblanc's original short stories, which at that point had not been copyrighted in the United States. Potter later sold his rights to play brokers Sanger & Jordan, who in turned sold the film rights to Vitagraph. Ultimately, Vitagraph won the right to distribute its Arsene Lupin without being enjoined, as long as it paid licensing fees to Leblanc's representatives, the 10 November 1917 Moving Picture World reported.
       Most reviewers were amused by Arsene Lupin, but the 16 February 1917 Variety called it "an insult to the intelligence of a ten-year-old schoolboy. The most impossible situations are dished up in all seriousness, and you are asked to believe they actually occurred....Earle Williams...confines himself to smoking cigarettes in close-ups and looking 'wise.' His first entrance is on horseback vaulting a three-foot fence, and for this a double is employed."
       Among the many other films based on the play, Leblanc's books, or the Arsène Lupin character are the 1916 British film Arsène Lupin, directed by George Loane Tucker; the 1919 Famous Players-Lasky film The Teeth of the Tiger (see entry); the 1920 Robertson-Cole film 813 (see entry); the 1921 Hungarian film Arsène Lupin Utolso Kalandja, directed by Paul Fejos; the 1923 Japanese film 813, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi; the 1932 M-G-M production Arsène Lupin, starring John and Lionel Barrymore and directed by Jack Conway; the 1938 M-G-M film Arsène Lupin Returns, starring Melvyn Douglas and directed by George Fitzmaurice; Universal's 1944 Enter Arsene Lupin (see entry), starring Charles Korvin; and the 1957 French film Les Aventures d'Arsène Lupin, directed by Jacques Becker.
       The National Film Preservation Board (NFPB) included this film on its list of Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films as of February 2021.