One of the most successful television franchises of all time has struggled to convert small-screen cultist into big-screen ticket buyers. Will there ever be a third X-Files movie?
Forty-something fans who were glued to their TV screens from the moment Chris Carter’s iconic TV series The X-Files landed in 1993 felt their hearts skip a beat a few months back. The two stars, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, both stated on the record that a third X-Files film is being pitched to 20th Century Fox by Carter and that both would be happy to revisit their beloved characters. But the question needs to be asked – is 20th Century Fox all that interested?
In an interview with Collider.com to promote his new low-budget film Goats, Duchovny expressed dismay at the studios reluctance to nurture the franchise. “I would love to do another film, or more,” he told interviewer Christina Radisch. “I think we’re all game for it. I know I’m kind of perplexed that Fox isn’t more [enthusiastic]. Here’s a homegrown property that you don’t have to go buy, like fucking Green Lantern or something, to make it. Here you’ve got an actual action franchise that’s your own. It’s weird to me, but I’m not an executive.” A far more circumspect Anderson addressed the issue at a Canadian fan expo in August. “I met with Chris before coming here and it’s looking pretty good," she teased. “We have to convince Fox.”
Writer/producer Frank Spotnitz (pictured, right), a creative force behind both the films and the TV series, went on the record with Collider, saying, “"I don't think it's too late, but I think it's going to be, pretty soon," he claimed. "I'm still agitating with everyone I can grab to say, 'Let's make this movie while we still can!' I've been saying for years now that I feel it's a cultural crime that they have not finished the series."
At the height of the series popularity, the studio offered up a big-budget big-screen version that set the chemistry-rich FBI pair of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully against the kind of vast canvas that fans would lay awake at night dreaming of (full disclosure – I’m an X-Files tragic). The 1998 film, titled The X-Files: Fight the Future and directed by Carter working with a budget of close to US$70million, grossed a solid US$84million domestically/US$105million internationally.
It was considered a perfectly acceptable starting point for a franchise that had a devoted fanbase. But news of the inevitable sequel was slow to emerge. Carter and his cast got into heated pay disputes with the studio, precipitating Duchovny’s departure and a steady decline in ratings (cast additions including Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish failed to halt the momentum).
Finally, in 2007, Fox greenlit and fast-tracked The X-Files: I Want to Believe, the sequel many thought would never materialize. The popularity of the series was still strong (thanks to DVD sales, which to this day prove a cash-cow for the studio), but this film was to be a much more modestly budgeted effort (about US$25million). Instead of the effects-heavy set-pieces that filled the first film (exploding buildings; spacecraft breaking through glacial drifts), I Want to Believe played like a late- season episode (also, the casting of lovable comedian Billy Connolly as a peadaphilic Catholic priest with psychic powers was perhaps, in hindsight, a bit misguided).
The plotline, a riff on the Frankenstein legend that involved Russian blackmarketeers trading in body parts, was dark, free of the supernatural/alien kicker that fans loved and decidedly small-screen stuff (and very icky). In the 2008 summer of such blockbusters as The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda, fanboy appetites were well and truly sated by the time Mulder and Scully’s latest thriller emerged in late July to mediocre reviews; it took US$20million.
Despite a fervent fanbase who want to believe there is box-office pull left in their heroes, no official word has been offered from 20th Century Fox as to whether a third X-Files movie is being developed.