Production notes

Directors Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro were offered the job, but turned it down due to other projects. Marcus Nispel was going to direct the film, but he left because of budget and script problems and was replaced by Peter Hyams. The role of Jericho Cane was written for Tom Cruise, but he chose to work on Magnolia, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was then cast in March 1998. Liv Tyler was the first choice for the role of Christine York, but she declined over contractual issues. Kate Winslet was then set to play the character, but she dropped out and Robin Tunney replaced her. According to Hyams,

Jim Cameron was the kind of godfather of me doing that film, because of his relationship with Schwarzenegger. He told me I was doing it! ... End Of Days was going to be Marcus Nispel, but it wasn't working somehow, but they had Arnold and a start date, and Jim came to me and told me I had to do it. This was the first picture Arnold had made for a couple of years. I think he had a heart thing. So this was Arnold coming back. And he wanted to try to make something good, and to take some chances. I applauded that. And we had very, very good actors around him, like Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Pollak and Rod Steiger. It was a very enjoyable experience. Half way through shooting I told Arnold I thought he should die in this movie. Of course Universal blanched at the idea, so I shot the ending both ways, and everybody agreed that the dying ending was the better one. Over 60 visual effects shots were created by Rhythm & Hues. In 2016, actress Miriam Margolyes complained about Arnold Schwarzenegger's behavior on set. In 2022, Margolyes' reported that he farted in her face while on set. Schwarzenegger did not respond to the allegations. The film was heavily promoted by the WWE, then WWF, with Schwarzenegger appearing live on the November 11, 1999 episode of SmackDown! where he was presented with an honorary championship belt, and the main cast took part in several taped interviews that aired on all WWF programming in the lead up to the film's release. The WWF were also given exclusive access on the red carpet of the film's premiere, interviews from which were also shown on their programming.

End of Days grossed $31 million in the United States and Canada from its five-day Wednesday opening. With a gross of $20.5 million in its opening 3-day weekend, it ranked third place at the US box office behind Toy Story 2 and The World Is Not Enough. The film went on to gross $66,889,043 in the United States and Canada and $145.1 million elsewhere, for a worldwide total of $212 million, against a budget estimated at $100 million. Although it was profitable because of strong international revenue and DVD sales, its final numbers fell short of Universal Studios' expectations. Schwarzenegger received a salary of $25 million for his role in the film.

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 11% "Rotten" score, based on 103 critic reviews with an average rating of 3.8/10. The site's consensus states: "An overblown thriller with formulaic action scenes and poor acting." Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 34/100 based on 33 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale. Newsweek wrote that "Peter Hyams's lurid, FX-happy thriller slams pieces of a dozen other movies into a noxious new compound. It has to be seen to be believed, but who'd want to?", while Mark Kermode called it "idiotic beyond the point of redemption, this sinfully stupid farrago manages to insult audiences and critics, Christians and Satanists alike, reducing 2000 years of fertile mythology to the level of an incoherent pop video." USA Today called Schwarzenegger's performance "among his worst" noting that he "seems to have trouble with his lines and doesn't get to make his trademark wisecracks". The Los Angeles Times's critic Eric Harrison called it "bloodless as a cyborg, and it feels as if it has been assembled according to diagrams supplied by someone who studied every successful sci-fi action thriller and then multiplied the findings by 10". Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that End of Days is "as incoherent about its mysticism as it is about anything else". However, there were a few mixed reviews. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle stated that "there are moments in End of Days when Schwarzenegger seems to be gunning for an Oscar", but "those moments play like comic relief". James Berardinelli called it "a deliciously bad motion picture", while Roger Ebert stated that "End of Days involves a head-on collision between the ludicrous and the absurd" giving it two stars out of four. In a retrospective editorial twenty years since the film's release, Bloody Disgusting highlighted how the film "is always fascinating and entertaining". Schwarzenegger later said that he thought Hyams was "the wrong director" for the film. "He did not have the potential... I think visually and intellectually to really do something with that movie, but he was recommended by James Cameron, so we thought 'Well he must know.'"

End of Days was nominated for three Razzie Awards—Worst Actor (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Worst Supporting Actor (Gabriel Byrne) and Worst Director (Peter Hyams)—and was pre-nominated for Worst Picture, but it was withdrawn shortly before the awards ceremony. It also received a nomination from the Motion Picture Sound Editors for Best Sound Editing - Effects & Foley as well as two nominations in the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards for Favorite Actor - Action/Science Fiction and for Favorite Supporting Actor - Action/Science-Fiction for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kevin Pollak respectively.