Portal:San Francisco Bay Area/Selected article/29

Zodiac is a 2007 American mystery thriller film directed by David Fincher and based on Robert Graysmith's non-fiction book of the same name. The Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. joint production stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr., with Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, Donal Logue, John Carroll Lynch, Chloë Sevigny, and Dermot Mulroney in supporting roles.

Zodiac tells the story of the manhunt for a notorious serial killer known as "Zodiac" who killed in and around the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, leaving several victims in his wake and taunting police with letters and ciphers mailed to newspapers. The case remains one of San Francisco's most infamous unsolved crimes.

Fincher, screenwriter James Vanderbilt, and producer Brad Fischer spent 18 months conducting their own investigation and research into the Zodiac murders. Fincher employed the digital Thomson Viper Filmstream camera to photograph the film. However, Zodiac was not shot entirely digitally; traditional high-speed film cameras were used for slow-motion murder sequences.

Reviews for the film were generally positive, but it did not perform strongly at the North American box office, grossing only $33 million. It was more successful in other parts of the world, earning $51 million. This brought its box office total to $84 million, with a budget of $65 million spent on its production. (more...)