Some directors make movies for fame, some for fortune, and some make them specifically to catch the Zodiac Killer while he's still active. Granted, only Tom Hanson falls into that last category, and "director" might be a strong word here.

Hanson was the owner of a successful chain of pizza restaurants called Pizza Man in California during the 1960s. He was well on his way to a fast-food-fueled fortune, until his underwriter went broke in 1971. Rather than bemoan his bad luck, Hanson decided to risk everything he had left on catching the Zodiac ... through the magic of cinema. And also through laying a trap and jumping on the infamous serial killer with a bunch of other guys.

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You see, Hanson had pals in the film industry, and even acted in a couple of B-movies, so he decided to use the $13,000 he had in savings to finance a film called Zodiac (soon renamed The Zodiac Killer, presumably after legal threats from an 11-year-old Fincher). Hanson figured that if he premiered the movie in San Francisco, where the Zodiac was still sending creepy letters to cops and journalists, the killer would feel like he had to go see it. Which kinda makes sense, since this was the '70s, when he couldn't simply read a Wikipedia summary or wait for a pirated version with Korean subtitles to find out what they were saying about him.

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So Hanson shot a low-budget, standard exploitation film that mostly tried to recreate the events as they happened. He even met with Paul Avery (the journalist played by Robert Downey Jr. in Fincher's movie) to get the details right, although the onscreen murders still ended up looking like this:

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Since Hanson had no clue who the Zodiac was or why he killed, he took a few liberties. In the movie, he's a postman who consults his room full of rabbits about his murderous plans and worships in a satanic temple in his basement.