No less than twenty more Chris Carter interviews, out promoting his new director’s cut of “I Want To Believe” + one interview from someone I had not seen interviewed before: special effects David Gauthier at the very end! Obviously there is a lot of repetition across these interviews and with the interviews from earlier this month. I have tried to quote the new bits for each. I will comment on the new cut itself at a later date.
What transpires from all of this is the following:
On IWTB: Although the Mulder-Scully relationship is his idea of an ideal relationship, one of his main motivations with the new version was to cut scenes that featured the relationship. He really feels he was forced to do this by movie executives who did not understand the show. [This could be the one thing that he regrets about in making TXF, which he mentioned at one point in the past. I’m glad he got it out of his chest and could “correct” it. Whether that makes for a better film…this is debatable.]
On his future idea for a final movie or a season 12: The word “immortality” comes up again and again, as does the question about what happened before the Big Bang. The aliens, the CSM and Scully could be immortal. Searching for immortality as an obsession of our times among the powerful is something he comments on. This is what he set up during the 4 Struggle episodes. [This does tie in with my own wild ideas about alien DNA providing insight to the fabric of time and space! Imagine that, a joke from a Darin Morgan episode (Clyde Bruckman) becoming canon. Is this an exciting development for the mythology? I don’t see how the Struggles were subtly setting this up, although we do know for a long while that (self-)healing is an alien power, and obviously William is shown surviving at the very end (is that the big hint?). As a culmination of the mythology I’m not sure it brings much more than what has been said already: whether it’s alien colonization or human conspiracy, what it has always been about is the manipulation of our genome to gain power and long-term control over humanity, and we have seen this already. This is another variant of this, with the nice addition of commenting on the current transhumanist obsession of our techbros overlords. I mean, the man can have interesting ideas (that have some trouble translating to a structured narrative end-product) but there’s so much “stuff” being made today, who am I to say no to it and why not giving him the chance to do this at this point?]
A couple more important items: He is working on something with Glen Morgan [tell us more!]. ‘Millennium’ and ‘The Lone Gunmen’ are not available anywhere because of the cost to license their music. [We knew about MM, this is new for TLG, and nobody asked about ‘Harsh Realm’ unfortunately. The new cut of IWTB was also costly because of new songs to license, so this is a trend.].
Here are the interviews:
Rolling Stone
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/chris-carter-x-files-i-want-to-believe-vrach-frankenshteyn-1235606375/
“I always felt that they forced me to shoehorn that Mulder-Scully relationship in there and that it took away from the scares. When we did the series, the relationship is something we always touched on in passing; it was part of the storytelling, but it wasn’t the object of the storytelling. I was always unhappy with the way that I was forced to do that.”
Have you ever felt tempted to collate the mythology episodes into one long story? “Yeah, it is of interest to me. We went to great pains to make all those puzzle pieces fit. It would be a thrill to put those puzzle pieces together.”
Men’s Journal
https://www.mensjournal.com/entertainment/chris-carter-x-files-directors-cut-ryan-coogler
+ full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER_s17h0HdE
Any message to fans upset you’ve robbed them of some Mulder-Scully Romance moments? “Frank Spotnitz told me people are gonna miss that last kiss. But are they? It’s a touching moment without the kiss. For me, it’s one of the most touching moments in the series. Scully, the emotion she’s experiencing there—she breaks down in a way, and it’s actually better for me without the kiss, as symbolic as it is, of their love for one another.”
“They should know this is more keeping in my vision. This is a re-exploration of something…I put my heart and soul into it.”
How To Geek
https://www.howtogeek.com/the-x-files-i-want-to-believe-chris-carter-hulu-streaming-august-2026/
If you were still writing episodes of The X-Files, is there a topic you would love to cover? “It’s funny, someone asked me about immortality today, and what I think about immortality. I said I love the idea of living forever. I said I’m not one of those people out there trying every wellness trick to try to live forever, although I try to live a healthy life. But I’m curious. Biblically, people lived for hundreds of years, so there are things in front of us which suggest a kind of relative immortality, and I’m fascinated by that idea. Are aliens immortal? If we were able to access alien technology and science, could we become immortal? All those things are of interest to me. If and when I bring my X-Files back to the screen, not Ryan Coogler’s X-Files, but if I ever bring mine, I actually, set up in the last two reboots, that very idea.”
Gold Derby
Chris Carter on re-cutting ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe’ into a ‘scary’ Frankenstein movie, and why he has ‘absolutely no input’ on Ryan Coogler’s TV reboot
Carter notices a current connection between the film and what’s happening in society: “It’s funny that the story now actually has relevance as people are talking about looksmaxxing or bodymaxing. There are tech bros who want to live forever. Is a head transplant a way to live forever? If you could do it with a monkey, as we are suggesting, you could do it with a human being. It has relevance in science in a way it didn’t in 2008.”
Den of Geek
X-Files Creator Chris Carter: ‘Vrach Frankenshteyn’ Director’s Cut Is More Horror, Less Romance
“The first movie, 1998’s The X-Files: Fight the Future, made money, but the producers weren’t necessarily fans of the show. So they wanted us to hit the relationship between Mulder and Scully really hard. I felt like the relationship took away from the horror of the story.”
“Even after people running 20th Century Fox movies said we should do a director’s cut, I never thought it was going to happen. I just assumed they’d come up with a reason we couldn’t do it. But it was full-speed ahead from the moment we showed them the trailer we cut.”
Gizmodo
https://gizmodo.com/chris-carter-on-how-the-real-world-has-caught-up-with-the-x-files-2000797394
“What I think was unappreciated when the movie came out was the Frankenstein element, which is only kind of alluded to at the end of the movie when Mulder’s putting a newspaper clipping on the wall. So I added “Vrach Frankenshteyn” to the beginning so that when—if you recall, the search party is following Father Joe out onto the ice and snow and he finds that arm, it suggests a Frankenstein story rather than a kind of a weird and disconnected clue. And it draws the audience into the Frankenstein story.”
“We made the movie for the big screen; I think the production values are big-screen values. Also, what dates this movie is that we shot it with film cameras, not digital video cameras. So it’s old school in that sense, and I think the values are filmic.”
“That relationship of Mulder and Scully is still my idealized relationship for a man and a woman, of mutual respect, of agreeing to disagree [on] faith and science, and of the intersection of those two things. That they can be something that you agree to disagree on and still maintain your relationship. I wish people could agree to disagree more in life because we have more disagreement than we have agreement in our lives and certainly our political lives right now.”
CBR
https://www.cbr.com/chris-carter-xfiles-interview-directors-cut-want-to-believe/
TV Insider
https://www.tvinsider.com/1281284/x-files-i-want-to-believe-directors-cut-changes-explained-chris-carter/
“That’s what we originally intended to do, a monster of the week story, a standalone. The budget was a third of the first X-Files movie budget. We had a limited amount of time to make it. We were making it in a place that was so hard to make a movie in, which was cold and snowy and icy and hard.”
Stand-alone: is that why you also cut mentions of Mulder’s sister and William? “Yes.”
On censorship and 2X13: Irresistible: “There was an episode I did called “Irresistible,” and it was about a man that I originally referred to as a necrophiliac. And when I turned that script in to the people at Standards and Practices, the network sensors, they said, “You can’t do a story about a necrophiliac.” When you’re working in television, the deadlines are fast and furious. And this is the script that I had and it would begin shooting day after tomorrow. And I had nothing to replace it with. And you’re on a conveyor belt, and you’ve got to be feeding the monster, it’s food. And so they basically handed the script back to me and said, “Can’t do this.” So it’s like I had to think about what I was going to do. Do I come up with a new story, try to write a script in two days? Not possible. So, I thought about it, and then I thought, “OK, I think I know what to do.” I referred to the necrophiliac as a death fetishist, and I handed the script back to them. They said, “OK, great. You can do it.” So sometimes, it’s as simple as a tweak, a point of view.”
IGN
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-x-files-creator-chris-carter-wants-to-continue-the-story-on-from-the-divisive-season-11-finale
“There’s a huge hardcore fanbase out there, and bless their hearts, they’ve adopted Mulder and Scully. I think it’s really those two characters are the secret to our success. Their relationship wasn’t just romantic. It’s respectful. It is combative. It is, for me, my perfect idea of a romance, of a relationship, of a friendship, of a mutually respectful relationship. And I think that’s simply the reason that people are still drawn to the show.”
“I was just visiting one of those people the other day, David Nutter, who came and directed some of our very best episodes. I’m working on something right now with Glen Morgan, who he and his partner, James Wong, wrote some of our best episodes and then directed some of them too. I’m still working with these people.”
Collider
https://collider.com/the-x-files-i-want-to-believe-vrach-frankenshteyn-directors-cut-chris-carter-interview/
“I never got to release the movie that we, Frank Spotnitz and I, originally imagined. That was back in 2008. But I got the idea to do a director’s cut only last year.”
Ars Tecnica
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/08/r-rated-directors-cut-of-x-files-film-restores-chris-carters-original-horror-vision/
“I worked with two different editors, people I respect and I’ve worked with before who weren’t involved with it all originally. I asked them to watch the movie and help me to refine the cut and make it the scary movie that I originally intended to make. It was heroic on their part. The movie was originally edited by an Academy Award winner, and so coming in and basically re-editing his vision took some courage.” “That said, I think the editors alone, just in the way they re-approached the movie, really helped it. I gave them the reins early on, and then when they gave those cuts back to me, that’s when I started to work on it. They added material, they took out material, they restructured material.”
“Scully being a scientist and Mulder being a believer in the paranormal, and that they agree to disagree wonderfully—it’s part of the nature of their relationship. I think it’s their mutual respect for one another. That, for me, is the ideal man-woman relationship. It feels inevitable. It feels destined. I have that relationship with my wife.”
Nerdist
https://nerdist.com/article/chris-carter-interview-the-x-files-i-want-to-believe-vrach-frankenshteyn/
The National Desk
https://thenationaldesk.com/news/entertainment/chris-carter-on-re-cutting-x-files-i-want-to-believe-into-what-i-wanted-people-to-see-david-duchovny-gillian-anderson
Space.com
https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/the-x-files-creator-chris-carter-says-new-directors-cut-of-i-want-to-believe-is-the-horror-movie-that-we-really-wanted-to-make-interview
“I really think of science as a search for God, and there are so many big questions that are unanswered, and we are trying to find the answers to those things. And will those answered questions bring us closer to an idea or a how it how it all began? What came before the Big Bang?”
IFLScience
https://www.iflscience.com/x-files-creator-chris-carter-on-how-real-life-head-transplants-inspired-the-shows-scariest-movie-84321
Inverse
https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/chris-carter-interview-2026
Scully’s Catholic faith is important to her. And I believe that you are a person of faith as well; is that true? “I am a person of challenged faith. I grew up in a religious environment. I have two uncles who are Protestant ministers. Catholicism is of interest to me — I had never been to Mass, and I live near a Catholic church, so I went to Mass the other day, and I found it fascinating.”
“Scully is working at a Catholic hospital, and they’re telling her to let this boy go, and she won’t let the boy go. So she follows her faith in science, and she follows her faith in God to save this young boy’s life. And she goes back to Father Joe. She wants to know about his faith, and how he can have this faith when he has betrayed it. For me, there are wonderful layers in this movie, and I think some of them went unappreciated when it came out in 2008.”
Scientific American
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQoMFWmaddM
What truth do you still think is out there that we haven’t had the answer to yet? “I’ll go for the big one, which is what was there before the Big Bang? That’s the question of the ages. If and when that is solved, it will take everything that’s wrong with planet Earth right now and turn it possibly upside down and solve so many problems when we realize why we are here, what we are doing, and what we are missing.”
“I wasn’t the biggest science fiction fan as a kid. My brother was the big science fiction fan and he became a scientist. I became a writer, and I think my interest is in telling stories. There’s something I’ll tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody, but one of the most inspirational movies for me starred Christopher Plummer, and it’s about Jack the Ripper, and it’s called “Murder by Decree”. And in that movie we have some of the same dynamics of The X-Files. And it is really Sherlock and Watson, I think that has gone largely unappreciated.”
What would a Chris Carter X-Files episode look like today? “I think it would be about, and I intend if we come back ever, to explore immortality. I think it’s something that everyone has imagined. There’s some people pursuing it vigorously right now through science. Everyone wants to know what it would be like to live forever, and I think everyone imagines it at some point or another in their life.”
About The Post-Modern Prometheus: “I got to explore it visually in a way we wouldn’t typically explore an X-File because it was in very big close-ups, and the actors are staring essentially right into the camera, just beside the camera, the camera was right in the actors’ faces through the shooting of it. So for me, it was another challenge in directing.
Variety
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/chris-carter-x-files-i-want-to-believe-directors-cut-1236836849/
+ podcast: https://omny.fm/shows/strictly-business-1/daily-variety-how-chris-carter-got-his-second-shot-at-the-x-files-i-want-to-believe-film
“Queens For a Day”: it revolves around “a very flawed person who has to go back in time and live her life through in someone else’s shoes”.
Polygon
https://www.polygon.com/x-files-creator-chris-carter-5-fan-questions/
Is the Smoking Man still alive? “Good question. Yeah, he seems immortal, doesn’t he? He survives everything and anything.”
Is Scully immortal? “It’s a good question. If Mulder and Scully ever reunite for season 12, I have something to say about that.”
Would season 12 have been the final season? “I don’t know. It’s funny, I always likened us to Lewis and Clark. We knew where we were going, we just didn’t know how we’re going to get there.”
He has more stories to tell with Mulder and Scully: “For me, it’s not over.”
The Wrap
How Chris Carter Finally Fixed ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe’
Rumors persisted that the movie was rushed into production to avoid an upcoming writers’ strike, which Carter denied. He said they didn’t know there was going to be a writers’ strike and were already in shooting when the strike happened. “Because we were already in production, we were given the ability to work and not have to man the picket lines,” said Carter.
He remembered that he and co-writer and producer Frank Spotnitz were in London on the promotional tour for “I Want to Believe” when they got a call from a Fox executive, telling Carter and Spotnitz that Fox wasn’t going to advertise the film. “They were simply going to rely on word of mouth from fans,” Carter said.
[About Millennium and The Lone Gunmen being unavailable on home video or streaming] Carter said that both are filled with “music that needs to be licensed that is very expensive.” “It’s really not any about anything other than the cost,” said Carter.
David Gauthier interview for CBC (Canadian TV)
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1i9madmNYg
[David Gauthier was the on-set practical special effects coordinator for the 5 Vancouver seasons and IWTB. The French diver infected by the black oil in ‘Piper Maru’ was named after him!]
On the new cut: “With the the lower rating we had on for the release of the film, he [Carter] wasn’t able to show all the great special effects makeup work that Bill Terezakis came up with.”
The abduction of the second victim: “Chris and I discussed how how he wanted him [the villain] to get into the car to grab her. What he wanted to do was just punch the window, so there’s a shot from inside the car with her face in the car when the villain uses his fists and punches out the window.” “It’s tempered glass, and I had to use tiny explosives to break the glass as his hand approached the glass, so it never really contacts the glass. The glass is broken just as his fist comes to it, and it looks like he’s broken it, but he hasn’t really broken it. That’s movie magic.”
Pushing Mulder’s car off the side of the road: “We wanted to get a shot of David in the car with the with the the pushing of the vehicle with him so we built a a mechanical rig to have the car tilt up while the while the snow plow was pushing it.”
Mulder emerging from the crashed car: “when Mulder escapes from the car that was buried in the snow, I was down there underneath in the car with him and helping him, pushing him out of the window so he could make his way out through the snow.” “Once we got him [David] into position, he had no footholds to push himself through the snow.” “At one point, which you don’t hear, he says, ‘Dave, that’s enough, that’s enough!'”
On IWTB: “The graphic nature of what was taking place in the show highlighted what the interaction of Scully and Mulder was at the time, when they were facing sort of the breakup of their team. I thought when Chris was able to really show the violence and the ugliness of what was taking place by the bad people, the love between Mulder and Scully was highlighted, and to me it made a completeness of to what The X-Files was all about.”
Creating 3X15: Piper Maru: “I took Chris over from the studio across the road to see a manufacturing of the newt suit, which was by Phil Newton, North Vancouver native, and he enjoyed it so much that he put that into a script, one of our lore scripts where the black oil enters the people through a newt suit. And Chris happened to use my name as this newt suit driver at the time.”