X-Files creator Chris Carter told the Daily Beast why he is more than happy to release the reins of his iconic series.
The cult classic show is returning with a twist, as Oscar-winning director Ryan Coogler (Sinners, Black Panther) has written and directed a pilot episode for a diverse reimagining. Carter said he is putting his own ideas for what’s next for X-Files aside until after he sees where Coogler’s show takes the universe.
And though he is credited as an executive producer, Carter is adamant that he will not read the script, and wants to take in the new series like a fan.
“I’m waiting for his series to come out,” before developing any other continuations on X-Files, he added. “I don’t want to step in the way of that.”
Though Coogler’s version will be led by Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel, who will play a different pair of FBI agents investigating the supernatural, the series is expected to overlap with the original. Carter revealed to Polygon this week that he believes both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will appear in the new series.
“At least Gillian, I think, is going to appear in the Coogler version. And I’m assuming David will too, so you will see Mulder and Scully there,” he said. Carter insists he has no idea to what extent Coogler’s version will engage with his own X-Files.
Carter said it’s his “respect for Ryan Coogler” that led him to turn over the series’ legacy to him.
“The reason he’s doing this is because he said it was his mom’s favorite show,” he explained. “I’m ready and excited to see how he’s going to do something that would make his mother proud.”
In the meantime, the show creator made a readjustment to one piece of his X-Files story that left him uncomfortable for years—his director’s cut release of 2008’s The X-Files: I Want to Believe—Vrach Frankenshteyn, which is available to stream on Hulu as of Friday, Aug. 14.
The re-edited movie, the original version of which Carter was forced to neuter to appease studio executives, lacked the core of what he set out to make, he told the Daily Beast.
The X-Files crew reunited six years after the show’s ninth-season finale in 2002 to film a feature-length update on Mulder and Scully. And while Carter planned to release a scary movie take on The X-Files that would show fans where the characters had been since the last season ended, “the studio, the executives were angry that we were showing them something that wasn’t the PG-13 movie that we had promised them,” he said. “And they referred to it as torture porn—how you would refer to something like the Saw movie or Saw series. I never felt it was that.”
Despite his disagreements, he removed most of the film’s gore and scares, which left him greatly “disappointed,” he shared. “I was never happy ultimately with the movie that came out… I actually could do more on the small screen on the TV show than I could do on the big screen for a PG-13 movie, which was disappointing that we never got to tell what I considered to be a good scary X-Files.”
A casual conversation with the head of feature film at 20th Century led to the opportunity to re-release the film and add back all his desired elements to create a scarier, more streamlined update on the famous characters and the organ-harvesting ring bust that brings them back together.
Carter said he hopped on it immediately. The characters are still very alive for him, he said, eight years after its brief revival concluded on March 21, 2018.
The Season 11 finale left fans divided following a major revelation for Scully’s character. As Carter put it, some were “horrified” by the story’s direction. “Somebody said to me, you didn’t give the fans what they wanted,” he told the Daily Beast, “But is that the job of X-Files storytellers? No. We want to give the fans more than they wanted or expected, and that’s really the case.”
“While I felt the criticism, because you always do, you can’t help but feel the criticism, and you can’t respond to it,” he added. “You just have to make them appreciate what they objected to.”
“I do have another X-Files story to tell,” Carter said, “whether it be as a series or as another X-Files movie.” But first, he will see where Coogler takes the story.
Carter’s Scully, played to acclaim by Gillian Anderson, has been one of Coogler’s biggest cheerleaders since the reboot was announced. “I spoke to him, and what I said was, ‘If anyone were to do it, I think you are the perfect person, and best of luck,’” she said last year. “At some point, if the phone rings and it’s good and it feels like the right time, then perhaps” she will make an appearance, she added.
Anderson also revealed that she read the pilot script, which she described as “f---ing cool.”
Prior to Carter’s reveal that both Anderson and Duchovny are likely to appear in the new series at some point, Duchovny told The Hollywood Reporter in April that he had also spoken to Coogler about the new series. “I’ve spoken to Ryan, and I have a general sense of what it is, but I haven’t read the script,” he said. “I wish them luck. It’s a great frame that Chris Carter came up with all those years ago—a believer and a nonbeliever tackling these mysteries. I always thought it was endlessly generative.”
“It really comes down to the writers room for me… I hope he’s got great writers, because that’s really the key to making that show work,” Duchovny added.
Some fans of the original show have expressed complaints before even seeing a frame, mostly around Coogler’s plans to diversify the reboot’s cast. Deadwyler told the Daily Beast’s Obsessed podcast that she has no time for the haters. “Who’s talking s--t?” she said in May. “I don’t know, I haven’t seen it. I ain’t on the end of it, so y’all haven’t hurt my feelings.”
As for what Coogler has planned for the show, she said she’s committed to staying tight-lipped about the project. “I believe in the spirit of surprise. And I believe that it’s good to be patient and to wait for things,” she added.
Carter told the Daily Beast that the “tidbits” he’s heard about what Coogler is cooking up have been intriguing. “He shot it up in Vancouver,” Carter said. “My wife and I were making a movie in Vancouver at the same time. And so there were people on the crew who were working on that movie—they weren’t associated with the X-Files—and would come and tell me little tidbits of things that were happening. They were kind of my spy network.”
“There were just little tidbits that I got along the way that were very exciting, actually,” he teased.
The show creator’s next project is titled Queens for a Day—an independent film he described as a “horror fable odyssey” and a “passion project.”
The vocal Trump critic said that his new film has a “political message,” which makes its release timing important: “I’m excited about showing it to people before the midterms.”
