News The X-Files Mysterious Director’s Cut of The X-Files: I Want to Believe Coming to Disney+ Director Chris Carter claims this is the version of the movie he always “intended” to make By Matthew Byrd | Published on May 19, 2026 Screenshot: 20th Century Fox Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: 20th Century Fox In a surprise press release, Disney has confirmed that they will be adding Chris Carter’s director’s cut of The X-Files: I Want to Believe to Disney+ on June 11. The specifics of this version of the movie are somewhat mysterious. It has long been reported that Carter wasn’t entirely satisfied with the version of 2008’s I Want to Believe that was released in theaters. He apparently battled the studio and censors over the film’s graphic content, which led to numerous scenes being cut or altered. “I made it too scary, basically, and I was told so by the brass at Fox, and they wanted a PG-13 movie,” Carter said during a 2025 interview on the Fail Better with David Duchovny podcast. “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, [the censors] are more permissive than they are for the movies.” Interestingly, the I Want to Believe DVD did include an “Extended Cut” of the movie. However, that version of the movie only included a few minutes of new footage which likely wouldn’t have affected the original movie’s rating much. Besides, to hear Carter tell it, this is a version of the movie that he only started working on recently. “Now I have a chance to go back and make the scary movie that I always intended,” Carter explained during that podcast interview. “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.” We don’t know the extent of the changes Carter intends to make to the film in this cut, but the prospect of a “rescued” version of the movie is certainly intriguing. Unlike the generally acclaimed 1998 X-Files movie, I Want to Believe is a largely standalone story that essentially functions as an extended Monster of the Week episode. The format was an advantage in some ways, though the final product sharply divided most fans, with many siding with the more negative critiques that called the movie disjointed, unnecessary, and underdeveloped. However, the film has always had fans who praised its standalone nature and Se7en/The Silence of the Lambs-like tone. It’s not clear if Carter would be able to seriously address some of the film’s more substantial structural issues. It seems much more likely that he’d be able to expand upon the grim nature of the original movie, though, which was certainly hindered by the film’s numerous cuts and eventual PG-13 rating. The good news is that we won’t have to wait long to see if this version of the film puts the sometimes-forgotten second X-Files movie back in the conversation.[end-mark] The post Mysterious Director’s Cut of <i>The X-Files: I Want to Believe</i> Coming to Disney+ appeared first on Reactor.