Tom Hanson directed the 1971 slasher film The Zodiac Killer, a fictionalized treatment of the Zodiac Killer case. In interviews from 2012 and 2017 he described the project as partly an attempt to lure the real Zodiac to the film’s premiere so he could be identified.
According to a 2017 Mental Floss feature, Hanson was a pizzeria owner, and that piece frames the movie and its premiere contest as part of his “bizarre plot” to capture the killer. He stated that cards filled out by moviegoers were to be compared against the Zodiac’s handwriting, with police on hand to detain a match — an effort that, by all accounts, did not catch anyone.