Chris Carter Explains How He Got a Second Shot at ‘The X Files’ Film

In today’s “Daily Variety” podcast episode, Chris Carter, the creator of “The X-Files,” shares with Variety‘s Michael Schneider his experience of creating a director’s cut of his 2008 film “The X-Files: I Want to Believe.” This new version, titled “The X-Files: I Wanted to Believe: Vrach Frankenshteyn,” premiered on August 14 on Hulu and Disney+ outside the United States.

Carter highlights that his preferred version is shorter than the original, which was 144 minutes long, according to IMDB.

“I always felt like people didn’t see the movie I intended to make,” Carter mentions, adding that 20th Century Studios executive Steve Asbell played a crucial role in initiating the director’s cut project. “I asked him, ‘Have you ever thought about doing a director’s cut?’ And it was really just offhand. And he said, ‘Why? Would you like to do one?’ I said, ‘I’d love to do one.’ I can tell you, though, the reason for doing the director’s cut for me is not to put all the stuff that was taken out, but to put the right stuff in that was taken out.”

Carter reveals that when the original film was released in 2008, he faced significant pressure to ensure it received a PG-13 rating.

“When we showed them our first cut, the studio freaked out. They said, ‘This is torture porn. And you can’t do this for a PG-13 movie.’ So we cut it back and we satisfied them. And then we gave it to the motion picture folks, and they said, this isn’t a PG-13 movie. And we cut it back even further,” Carter recalls. “So the movie you’re seeing is, by and large, the movie that my partner in crime, [writer-producer] Frank Spotnitz, and I set out to make. And we always set out to make a very scary movie on a very limited budget, which is kind of the way we made ‘The X Files‘ TV series.”

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