It’s a good time to be a fan of The X-Files. While the franchise has had its ups and downs over the years, no amount of freakish monsters or vast alien conspiracies can keep Mulder and Scully retired for long – and 2026 is shaping up to be an especially interesting year for the paranormal investigators.
After all, not only are we getting a reboot of the iconic show, produced by horror maestro Ryan Coogler, but original series creator Chris Carter was finally given the opportunity to go back to his divisive 2008 film The X-Files: I Want to Believe and re-edit the picture to be closer to what he had in mind before he was forced to conform to a PG-13 rating.
With The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn now available to stream on Hulu and Disney+, Bloody Disgusting spoke with Chris Carter about what fans can expect from this scarier director’s cut.
Bloody Disgusting: Thank you so much for making time for us, Chris! The first thing I wanted to ask was about the new runtime, which is actually shorter than the 2008 cut of the film. What was the thinking behind that, especially as streaming services prefer longer watch times?
Chris Carter: Typically, with a director’s cut, people throw everything back in that was cut out. For me, the reason to do this whole thing was that, when we originally set out to make [the movie], we made it, showed the cut to the studio, and they had a very strong reaction. They referred to the movie as torture porn, and they said that this isn’t a PG-13 release; it’s like one of the Saw movies or something.
They said, “You promised us a PG-13 movie, and you didn’t deliver that. This is far too graphic and scary.” It was at that moment that I realized they really didn’t know The X-Files very well. So we went about cutting it back to what we thought could be PG-13, delivered it again, and they said: “Okay, much better. Now you’ve got to give it to the censors.” And sure enough, the censors said: “This is not a PG-13 movie.”
So we had to cut it back even farther. At that point, for me, it wasn’t really a good, scary X-File anymore. Ironically, if I were making an hour of television, I could have made it scarier. You actually had more permission with an hour of television. Anyway, this time, I wanted to make it the scary movie that we had originally imagined, Frank Spotnitz and I. So that’s what I did.
But there was another studio note early on: they really wanted more of the Mulder-Scully relationship story. But because we’ve had two reboots in between, I thought the fanbase would have gotten their fill of Mulder and Scully and their romantic entanglement by now. What they really wanted, and what I wanted, was to focus on a good, scary story.
BD: Where did this specific scary story come from?
CC: The original idea for this movie came from something that I read about a doctor in Cleveland, Ohio who had transplanted the head of a monkey onto another monkey. I thought: “That is an X-Files story.”
I actually flew out to Cleveland to meet with this doctor at Case Western University. We sat and talked about it, he was a very nice man, and he told me how he had done it and why it was successful. The monkey ended up dying, but it was still a successful transplant. I thought: “That’s perfect, why not do it as an X-Files story? A transplant of a head onto another body.” So that was the inspiration for the scary part of the story.
I always felt it was a great Frankenstein story, but it was never appreciated as such. It was only nodded to towards the end of the movie. So we’ve added this new title to give everyone an idea of what the story is really about, because [the film] begins somewhat ambiguously with the search party finding the arm and hand of a man we just saw get assaulted, and it doesn’t quite add up. So when you know it’s a Frankenstein story, I think you’re much better drawn into the movie.
BD: Was there any specific moment in the film that gave you guys trouble with the studio/censors?
CC: You know, it’s scary, those scenes with the woman being held in the box and then witnessing medical experiments going on and fearing for her life. That’s a really scary thing for people, the idea of being stalked by someone and taken like that.
But at the same time, I thought there was a connection between that and what Scully was doing, which was also a scary operation on somebody else. That and what they’re doing in the lab are two different kinds of medicine, and I thought it was a scary thing that you can be so unlucky to have to subject yourself to operations like that. It was a nice connection where Scully’s heartfelt emotions contrasted with the terror of the work going on in the secret lab.
BD: It’s common knowledge that you originally planned for there to be three X-Files movies to close out the series, and we’re 2/3 of the way there. So, regardless of the upcoming reboot series, is there any chance that you’d come back for another adventure with Mulder and Scully? And if so, do you already have a story in mind?
CC: I’ve got the perfect story for another movie. It could be that they just want to do another series, and I don’t want to get in the way of Ryan Coogler and his vision. I’m completely respectful of him and what he’s doing, and I can’t wait to see it. I’ve actually made a point of not reading the script because I want to watch it like everyone else.
But I do have another story that I’d like to tell with Mulder and Scully.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn is available to stream on Hulu & Disney+ beginning August 14, 2026.
