I Want To Believe’s Fight For PG-13 Rating Against Studio Execs & MPA

Chris Carter has finally put his true vision together for The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn after some previous creative challenges.

The new Hulu and Disney+ release acts as an R-rated director’s cut of the 2008 film that brought David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson back as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in order to find the culprit behind a string of missing women, including an FBI Agent. I Want to Believe included new and returning faces for the X-Files franchise, including Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly, Xzibit and Mitch Pileggi as Assistant Director Walter Skinner.

Released in July 2008, the X-Files film scored mixed-to-negative reviews from critics and was only a modest box office performer, grossing just over $68 million against its $30 million production budget. After years of talks of the changes having to be made to the sequel, Duchovny revealed that Carter was working with 20th Century Studios and Disney for Vrach Frankenshteyn, which would restore the horror elements from his original vision of the film.

Now, in honor of its streaming premiere, ScreenRant‘s Grant Hermanns interviewed Chris Carter to discuss The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn. When asked about why the MPA initially struggled to give the 2008 film a PG-13 rating, the co-writer/director began by recalling that Fox executives at the time were similarly “angry” after the first screening of the final film, with some accusing him of having made “torture porn,” and referring to it in the vein of the Saw franchise “or something that was a slasher movie“:

Chris Carter: And I thought, “No, this is a smart X-Files.” But, they won that argument, and we cut it back to what we got them to agree was a PG-13 movie. And then, lo and behold, we gave it to the MPA, and they said, “This isn’t a PG-13 movie,” and we had to cut it back even further.

Having given into both studio execs and the MPA, the years since have seen Carter “had to live with that knowledge” that his X-Files movie “wasn’t the scary story we set out to make.” Thankfully, though, during a meeting with 20th Century Studios exec Steve Asbell, the writer/director decided to “ask the guy on a whim” about whether he’d ever considered a director’s cut for I Want to Believe, leading to his pitch for the horror-centric version, which he’s happy is finally hitting the screen.

Making The New X-Files Director’s Cut Without Mark Snow Was “Hard” For Carter

Screen Rant: Grant from ScreenRant here, Chris, it’s great to meet you, especially as a fellow Cal State Long Beach journalism grad!

Chris Carter: Go 49ers! You just took me right back to a time and place. I remember I was an art major, and I walked out of the building and I thought, “This is not really what I want to be pursuing as a career.” I literally walked down the hill into that journalism department, and spoke to a man named Vic Cox, who was a professor there, and he ended up being part of my inspiration as, not just a journalist, but as a writer.

Screen Rant: So, to talk about amplifying the horror elements for The X-Files: I Want to Believe — Vrach Frankenshteyn, I feel like I noticed new bits of score in this one compared to the original version of the film. Is that correct?

Chris Carter: Yes, correct.

ScreenRant: So, obviously, he’s got a tribute in the credits, but how did it feel to do this version without Mark Snow and really utilizing his unique soundscape for this new horror version?

Chris Carter: Yeah, it was hard. He was part of the team, but he had scored the movie originally, and I felt like he had done a beautiful job. And that day that I sat and watched him conducting the small orchestra that he had assembled to do the music was, for me, a high point. Because we were used to going into his little studio, where he had done a digital version for each episode, which also was thrilling. I always told him that we delivered him a corpse, and he breathed life into it, Frankenstein-like. [Chuckles] So, I missed that process. I got to work very closely, though, with a guy named Jeff Charbonneau, who was our music editor from the very beginning. He has actually worked on the show for just a slightly shorter time than I have. He came in, worked on the temp score on the pilot, and helped to sell the movie, so I’m forever grateful to him, and he was here once again with this. There’s that Clannad song, beautiful Clannad song when Scully’s performing that medical procedure, and I think that it makes the movie that much better.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe’s Credits Scene Has A Special Meaning

Chris Carter standing behind a camera in a snowy field in The X-Files: I Want to Believe set

ScreenRant: To change gears a little bit, looking at the credit scene, obviously that’s been there since the original, and I know you’ve talked about how it was sort of a fourth wall break of a thank you to the fans, and to give Mulder and Scully a little breather. But I can’t lie, I have always sort of viewed that final scene before Christian’s operation as almost a break-up goodbye between Mulder and Scully. So I’m curious, was there an intentional juxtaposition between leaving those characters in that scene and then still having that more upbeat scene in the credits?

Chris Carter: Every story has a beginning, middle, and end, and as you say, that ending breaks the fourth wall. Let me just speak to that ending real quick. We had just been shooting for 50 days in the most forbidding cold environment that you can imagine, which is part of the great production value in this movie. I wanted those characters, like I wanted to be, somewhere in the tropics, enjoying each other and waving, ultimately, at the fans. The reason I’m sitting here talking to you is the fandom for this movie. I went to the 30th anniversary event in Minneapolis, and it was fantastic. When you have kids come up to you and say they love the show, and you look at them, and you realize their parents probably didn’t even know each other when the show originally aired, it’s mind-blowing. It is completely surreal, so every X-Files we make is with those people in mind.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe — Vrach Frankenshteyn is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+!