Before Ryan Coogler’s reboot of The X-Files arrives, Disney will be giving us a brand-new cut of the 2008 thriller The X-Files: I Want to Believe. According to a news release from Disney, the company will drop The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Director’s Cut on Disney Plus on June 11.
Chris Carter, the director of the film and the creator of The X-Files, first made mention of the new version of the film last June on an episode of the podcast Fail Better with David Duchovny. “I made it too scary,” Carter explained in the interview. Fox had wanted a PG-13 movie and Carter’s original cut would have been rated R, so he was forced to cut it back. Additionally, Carter said he had to cut back on the scariness again when the censors had seen the film, so the final version of the movie was not completely the movie that Carter had set out to make.
“Now I have a chance to go back and make the scary movie that I always intended,” said Carter on the podcast. “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.”
Previously, an “Extended Cut” of the film was included on the DVD releases of The X-Files: I Want to Believe. It added just over three minutes of footage and, according to reviews, only changed the film marginally, prolonging certain shots, particularly the gorier ones in the film, which was about a case in West Virginia involving body mutilation.
Polygon reached out to Disney for clarification and additional info on the cut, but didn’t hear back before publication. However, the way Carter spoke of this version in Duchovny’s podcast, this is likely a brand new cut of the film that will fulfill what The X-Files: I Want to Believe should have been to begin with.