Netflix has acquired the three-part docuseries “This is the Zodiac Speaking,” which promises new insight about the unsolved murder case of the Zodiac Killer. The series, which comes from Ample Entertainment and is directed by Ari Mark and Phil Lott, offers up new interviews and clues that places even more evidence that the only person to ever be named a suspect — Arthur Leigh Allen — may likely be the true culprit.
“There’s only a handful of real murder case IP that are not only quintessentially American, but really define an era,” Mark said. The Zodiac case, he said, “also defines the true crime genre in a lot of ways.”
In the series, tentatively scheduled to drop on October 23, Mark and Lott speak to a California family who once had Allen as a teacher, as well as family friends of the suspect. As they go through archival and physical evidence owned by the family, they connect more dots between Allen and the Zodiac murders.
Mark and Lott noted that the family started to piece things together after watching David Fincher’s 2007 film about the murders, “Zodiac.”
“Fincher filmed at the real sites of the murders, and they realize, ‘maybe he really was the Zodiac killer, because he took us to all these places,’” Mark said. “And they started uncovering all these letters that he’d been writing back and forth with their mother that are the most incriminating letters in the world.”
Mark and Lott also had access to author Robert Graysmith, who wrote the book that was adapted into Fincher’s film. “We had access with him in a way that nobody has really had,” Mark said. “He really put this in perspective for us.”
Mark and Lott also exec produce “This Is the Zodiac Speaking” — the title is a riff on how the killer would start every letter — along with P.G. Morgan.
“A lot of this material is brand new,” Lott added. “It hasn’t been seen before because when [Allen] died, there was no more investigation from a law enforcement perspective. So there’s no one really to send it to. So we got to look all those letters and read the crazy, very incriminating material.”
Courtesy Ample Entertainment
“This Is the Zodiac Speaking” reps the latest project to come out of the ten-year partnership between Mark and Lott, who launched Ample a decade ago to focus on what Mark called their “sweet spot”: “Handcrafted premium stuff where we’re both directing and making. We’re usually at our best when we’re not just selling and then dumping it on a showrunner. Over those 10 years, a lot of people told us we weren’t going to be able to do it. Frankly, we’re an independent company. We didn’t have any real financiers, so it was always about creating stuff we want to spend our time doing. Naturally that gravitated towards things that lend themselves to a cinematic approach. Big crime, high stakes, big adventure, mystery and then natural history.”
Ample’s output has included the HBO doc series “The Invisible Pilot” with Adam McKay; “Morimoto’s Sushi Master” at Roku; the Emmy-nominated Netflix natural history series “Kangaroo Valley” with Sarah Snook; and Peacock’s “The Hungry Games: Alaska’s Big Bear Challenge.”
The company also is behind History’s docudrama “Ancient Empires,” as well as the true crime series “The Beauty Queen Killer: 9 Days of Terror” (Hulu), and Discovery+’s “Murder in the Heartland,” “Price of Glee,” “Queen of Versailles Reigns Again” and “Death by Fame.”
“We’ve been through the storms and the ups and downs of this business, and we’re kind of back at this point of like, ‘What do you want to make?’ Because despite what people think, having a production company is not some kind of windfall of money. You’re taking on all the risk.”
The company is also taking some swings by financing a slate of indie films, including the feature doc “After the Fyre,” about disgraced Fyre Fest creator Billy McFarland and where he is now.
“I think the swings are very big that we’re trying to take,” Mark said. “Both on the non fiction side and on the scripted side, we’re going to make one or two projects that we just fully own and just see where that route leads.”
Source Agencies
