THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE Is Getting a Director's Cut and It's Coming to Disney+
Fans of The X-Files are about to get a very different version of the franchise’s divisive 2008 movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Disney+ is set to release a director’s cut of the film on June 11, giving creator and director Chris Carter the chance to finally unleash the darker version he originally wanted audiences to see.
When the movie first hit theaters, it didn’t exactly set the world on fire. The supernatural thriller struggled at the box office and currently sits at a rough 32% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. Even longtime X-Files fans were split on the film’s slower, moodier approach and its grim standalone story.
The movie followed Mulder and Scully years after leaving the FBI, only to get dragged back into another unsettling investigation involving a missing agent, disturbing psychic visions, and a case that spirals into deeply creepy territory.
Now it sounds like the version coming to Disney+ may be a lot closer to the unsettling thriller Carter originally envisioned.
The filmmaker talked about the new cut during an appearance on David Duchovny’s Fail Better with David Duchovny podcast in 2025, where he explained that the theatrical version was heavily toned down to secure a PG-13 rating.
“I made it too scary, basically, and I was told so by the brass at Fox, and they wanted a PG-13 movie. So, we cut it back to be a PG-13 movie, and we thought, 'Okay, we've satisfied their demands.' The critics, the people who rate the movies, said, 'No, it's not a PG-13 yet, you've got to cut it back even farther.'
“I can tell you that you can do more on network television, they're more permissive than the censors are for the movies, the people who rate the movies.
“And so now I have a chance to go back and make the scary movie that I always intended to make. 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.”
This is actually pretty exciting! As a huge fan of The X-Files, I’m incredibly excited to see this! One of the biggest complaints surrounding I Want to Believe was that it didn’t fully lean into the disturbing horror elements the franchise was known for during its best years.
If Carter is restoring material that pushes the film deeper into psychological horror territory, there’s a good chance audiences may end up reevaluating this strange little chapter of The X-Files mythology.
At the very least, it’ll be interesting to see how much darker and more intense this new version actually is.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Director’s Cut starts streaming on Disney+ on June 11.