In the meantime, watch the skies
It looks like we’ll have to wait just a little bit longer for the truth. In a recent press release, Disney announced that, on June 11, it would debut a new director’s cut of the 2008 movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe on Disney Plus. But as of June 16, I Want to Believe is no longer listed on that press release, and it’s still not on the streamer, either. Don’t worry, though, Polygon can confirm that it’s still coming, just a little later than originally advertised.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe was first released six years after the finale aired of the show’s original run. Set in West Virginia, the movie saw Agent Mulder (David Duchovny) and Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) reunite to solve a case involving body mutilation and a psychic connection to a killer. Given the heavy subject matter, director Chris Carter’s original vision would have warranted an R-rated movie, but Fox insisted on a final product that was rated PG-13.
Carter, who created The X-Files, first made mention of a director’s cut of I Want to Believe on Duchovny’s podcast, Fail Better with David Duchovny in June 2025. “I made it too scary,” Carter explains in the interview. “Now I have a chance to go back and make the scary movie that I always intended.”
It seems that Carter is still working on executing that original vision. A source tells Polygon that the Disney Plus delay is due to some last-minute adjustments being made to the film. Those final edits shouldn’t take too long, as we were also assured that the release will be coming later this summer. Given the 15 years since the film’s original release, another month or two isn’t too terrible a wait.