Zodiac is a
2007 American 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..
Zodiac tells the story of the hunt for a notorious
serial killer known as "
Zodiac" who haunted 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. During filming, Fincher employed the digital
Thomson Viper Filmstream camera to shoot the film. Contrary to popular belief,
Zodiac was not shot entirely digitally; traditional high-speed film cameras were used for slow-motion murder sequences.