Creator and director Chris Carter’s intended vision finally makes it to the screen in The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn, a brand new Director’s Cut version of the 2008 feature film that’s said to be both scarier and Rated R. The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn begins streaming on Hulu & Disney+ on August 14, 2026.
Hulu previews this week, “The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn reimagines creator and director Chris Carter’s original vision in this all-new director’s cut.”
The new cut was first teased in an interview with director Chris Carter on the Fail Better With David Duchovny podcast from last year, where he promised a much scarier movie.
“Now I have a chance to go back and make the scary movie that I always intended to make,” Carter explained. “It’s not just doing a Director’s Cut to do a Director’s Cut. It’s really kind of bringing to life something that for me was on the page and never got to the screen.“
“We set out to make a real-life Frankenstein movie, and due to a variety of factors, our Frankenstein never completely left the operating room,” Carter tells Entertainment Weekly in a new interview this week. “A chance to apply the electrodes again was a special thrill.”
Years after walking away from the FBI, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dr. Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are pulled back from the shadows when a federal agent vanishes without a trace. In a case you’d never see on TV, their only lead is a disgraced, defrocked priest claiming to have horrific psychic visions of the crime. Forced to confront the ghosts of their past, the partners must navigate a chilling winter landscape and an even darker human monstrosity. The truth of these crimes is out there somewhere… and it will take Mulder and Scully to find it.
It’s been nearly twenty years since the release of The X-Files: I Want to Believe, with the 2008 movie serving as the second and last feature film based on the series.
The idea was for The X-Files: I Want to Believe to essentially be a feature length monster-of-the-week tale, and it came along ten years after the original X-Files movie. Unfortunately, while 1998’s movie scared up $189 million at the global box office, I Want to Believe ended its run with just $69 million, and the franchise later returned to the small screen in its wake.
Almost 20 years later, will the film finally be redeemed? We’ll find out on August 14.
