
“The Day Another Film Fell Apart” | Charlie Shackleton, Zodiac Killer Project

Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why?
The most significant day in the making of Zodiac Killer Project was the day another film fell apart. It was August 2022, and I was sitting in Maggie’s Diner in Vallejo, California, having spent the morning scouting locations for a true crime documentary about the Zodiac Killer. As I ordered my lunch, I received an email to say that negotiations for the rights to the book upon which the film was to be based had fallen through. I was devastated.
Back then, I had a love-hate relationship with true crime, which I consumed voraciously but uneasily. I was drawn to the puzzle-solving aspect of the genre—the way even a long-unsolved case like that of the Zodiac Killer can feel tantalizingly close to resolution—and, no doubt, the macabre spectacle of it all. But at the same time, I’d seen enough true crime to develop a queasy familiarity with its inflexible formulas and routine moral shortcomings.
I wanted to make a documentary about the Zodiac Killer because it’s a remarkable story and because I couldn’t believe there was no definitive doc on the subject—but I also thought it could be a vehicle to explore true crime’s rapid expansion and questionable ethics. From the vantage point of 2025, when even the most cynical murder docs position themselves as meta-textual critiques of true crime, that might have been wishful thinking.
There in the diner, though, the collapse of the project was incredibly frustrating. It was only once the dust settled that I recognized the setback might have a creative upside. I’ve always worked well with limits and restrictions, and here was a seismic one: I couldn’t make the film at all.
See all responses to our annual Sundance Question here.