'Zodiac Killer Project' director recalls big streamers' response

True crime documentaries have major viewership on Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. So, when Charlie Shackleton made Zodiac Killer Project, a meta-documentary, their interest was expected.

During the screening of his project at the Karlovy Vary film festival, the British filmmaker said that many streamers had requested tickets for his documentary's world premiere at Sundance.

“They had a certain number, like 50 tickets, that they could give to various distributors,” he added. 

“We’ve never had such demand” as “Netflix wants 30 tickets, Amazon wants 30 tickets, Hulu wants 30 tickets. We don’t have enough tickets to give them.”

However, Charlie said he did not raise his hopes high, recalling the words of the sales executive, who spoke to him, “Don’t get me wrong, none of them are ever going to buy the movie. They’re not interested in the movie. They just want to know what’s in it.” 

Ultimately, that's exactly what happened. “They all turned up at our world premiere,” the director said during a Q&A session at the festival.

“We had 100 people from all of the streaming platforms, and you could hear the noises from the different areas of the room when clips [from their respective true doc projects] came up because they were all trying to sound like they weren’t bothered."

He continued, "They were all trying to sound like they saw the funny side. So the Netflix people would be laughing the most at the stuff that was Netflix content, because they wanted to seem like they had a sense of humor about it.”

“The next day, obviously they all passed on the movie, which we knew was very much going to be the case. But they had seen it, and they smiled politely," the creator concluded.

Charlie's Zodiac Killer Project is far from a typical true crime documentary. Instead, the film is about his attempt to make a documentary, which ultimately failed.