‘X-Files’ Creator Chris Carter Is Back To TV With Mystery Drama Produced By MRC
EXCLUSIVE: The long-awaited return to TV of The X-Files creator Chris Carter is close to reality. I’ve learned that Carter is set to write, direct and executive produce a mystery drama with a female lead for MRC. The company, which hopes to go straight to series on the project, is expected to start pitching the show to networks in the next few weeks. Carter had had the idea for the action series for a while and earlier this year pitched it to MRC, which has been teaming with A-list film and TV auspices. The company most recently sold the David Fincher/Kevin Spacey drama House Of Cards to Netflix with a two-season order. Since The X-Files ended its run on Fox in 2002, ICM-repped Carter has stayed largely out of the spotlight, only resurfacing to do the 2008 X-Files movie sequel and the upcoming thriller Fencewalker. There is now talk about a potential third X-Files movie.
Great news. Now get to work on X-Files 3, and make sure it’s good.
The only way X-Files 3 has any chance of being good is if Chris Carter has nothing to do with it. He may have created the show, but he never understood what made it great.
this comment is absurdly stupid.
Morgan & Wong–and Vince Gilligan–might heartily disagree…
I always heard them cry foul but never heard why. Does anyone have specifics?
MF Luder–let’s just say that a certain producer was not happy his show was successful in great part because of certain writers. And that said producer liked to put his writing staff through “give me apples…no, I want oranges…didn’t I say I wanted kumquats?” rewriting hell out of pure insecurity/possessiveness.
Vince Gilligan has complimented Chris Carter many times and said he has a lot of respect and fondness for him as a showrunner. Carter has also frequently complimented him, Morgan & Wong and Darin Morgan for their work on the show, and he very rarely rewrote any of their work.
In a recent TIME Magazine interview, Gilligan said of Carter: “I learned a great deal from working for him and the way we break our stories on Breaking Bad.”
Don’t listen to that nonsense. The rewriting in question was on two episodes when two very embittered producers licking their wounds when they amazingly unoriginal sci-fi show tanked returned to the fold humbled, and both had to do with bits at the end.
Let’s just say hypothetically that the real issue is jealousy by two producers who failed in everything they initiated following employment by said showrunner (including two spectacular failures recently), including a very generous offer to take over said showrunner’s new show. Hence, the recruitment of internet stalkers (some of whom were given jobs or promises of jobs) to wage a long-running proxy war based on nothing at all but professional jealousy.
Yeah- that’s really what all the Chris Carter hate you see on the Internet is all about.
Absolutely agree. Only one of my favorite episodes, Post-Modern Prometheus, was written by Carter. All my other favorites were written by one the men you named.
Real X-Files fans know those three were the strongest writers on the show.
No, that comment is right on the money.
Harsh Realm and The Lone Gunmen tanked. Millennium never really caught on and the last four years of The X-Files were abysmal. The Fencewalker movie, a film so secretive and has been in post production forever and most likely won’t see the light of day except on dvd. I Want To Believe was a critical and box office failure. Chris Carter is not Hollywood golden boy anymore. He’s a one hit wonder and lost his magic on writing good scary stories.
HA! A one hit-wonder. Why so cynical? He created one of the most successful and beloved TV franchises of all time. I agree with the 1st commenter. Absurd. Everyone is an absolute authority, ready to declare something dead on arrival before we’ve even gotten any details about it! I didn’t care for Lone Gunmen, personally, but Harsh Realm and Millennium were both excellent television. I would bet on this new project to be a winner. He’s a brilliant mind and due for a win.
Lone Gunmen was only exec produced by Chris Carter, Vince Gilligan was the de facto showrunner and took its cancellation very badly. Harsh Realm was canceled by Doug Herzog, who hated The X-Files and wanted to make Action the flagship of his tenure at Fox. Everything that launched under him died ugly. Millennium’s ratings died when Morgan and Wong took it over and never recovered.
Man, I could NOT agree more… the guy that created it never understood it? I wish to punch you.
Anyone who attacks Carter and heaps praise on Morgan and Wong doesn’t understand “The X-Files” and I seriously doubt has watched any of Morgan and Wong’s work without Mr. Carter’s involvement. Don’t get me wrong; Morgan and Wong were very talented (as Carter says, “Beyond the Sea” is the best episode of Season 1; brilliant work), but they have a very simplistic — almost conservative and childish — approach to storytelling. They tend to try to sum up the meaning of life and the universe in their scripts; their work on “Millennium” Season 2 really showcases this because Carter was not involved in the story at all and hasn’t even watched all the episodes. When I was a teen, I loved “Millennium” Season 2, but, when the DVDs came out, I realized how original and impressive Season 1 was under Carter and how derivative, melodramatic, and simplistic Season 2 was under Morgan and Wong. Carter is a much more artful, naturalistic writer; he’s not trying to wrap everything up karmically. Were there bad scripts by him? He’d be the first to admit so — especially in Season 7. However, he also wrote the show’s best work: “Redux II” and “Talitha Cumi”. Quite importantly, his vision for his shows is far more political, imaginative, and ultimately impressive than the conspiratorial, simplistic dialogue Morgan and Wong wrote.
Morgan and Wong’s course for “Millennium” ruined what was a show that honestly humanized serial killers who often felt guilty for their actions and that created a protagonist that was wholly different and nearly as compelling as Mulder and Scully to explore very different themes. “Harsh Realm” was somewhat derivative of “The X-Files”, but “Millennium” was completely original and butchered by Morgan and Wong under Fox’s directives to make it more like “The X-Files”. The best episode of Season 2 was written by Carter-picked writer Michael Perry, who, to be fair, complements Wong’s brilliant editorial skills.
Morgan and Wong shockingly tried to violate Carter’s refusal to kill Frohike in “Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man” by trying to go around him and film and doctor footage to create that eventuality on film. Luckily, he had the footage stolen, if you believe their account. I loved the episode as a teen, but it’s quite embarrassing and showcases much of how Morgan and Wong approach things. CSM had to not simply be important but the murderer of JFK and MLK and a hack writer and so petty that he never let the Buffalo Bills win the Superbowl and determined world events with such perfect precision and all-encompassing power. Life isn’t like that and actor William B. Davis hated the script for valid reasons and didn’t feel they respected the work that had been done with his character since they had left the show in Season 2.
Moreover, Carter has such an ability to craft characters with such detail; it’s amazing how he even thought through Frank Black’s mannerisms (that he wouldn’t use his hands when he spoke) and what color and kinds of clothes he’d wear. This is in stark contrast to the self-absorbed tendency of Morgan and Wong to have their characters like all the kinds of things they like. And THEY’RE THE ONES WHO KEPT CASTING A TERRIBLE ACTING PORNSTAR in their work. (No offense to pornstars.) It was acceptable to have Ashlyn Gere in “3″, but her performance in the “Millennium” Season 2 episodes “Owls” and “Roosters” was so over the top and embarrassing! Even the Lara Means character was irritatingly melodramatic and overly expressive of her spiritual experiences — a little like Melissa Scully, whom they also wrote as a caricature.
Furthermore, Vince Gilligan’s incredible talents are observable in “Breaking Bad”, but Chris Carter or someone on board rewrote his first episode, I recall reading somewhere. Gilligan’s work declined just as much as everybody else’s as the series went on. I was shocked “Breaking Bad” was so good, after episodes like “X-Cops” and the over-the-top comedy of the Lone Gunmen episodes.
Many fans blame Carter for the mythology supposedly not making sense, but it made a lot more sense plot-wise than anything on “Lost” or any other show, and, more importantly, it made tremendous psychological and emotional sense in terms of what guided the Cigarette Smoking Man’s actions; it wasn’t spelled out, but his treatment of Fox Mulder from threat to the conspiracy to son when it seemed like he commiitted suicide to rejected son when Jeffrey showed up was incredibly impressive.
The show didn’t always succeed, and no show does all the time. Carter never had any vacation time in the first 8 years and wrote or rewrote 20 of 24 episodes in Season 3 — arguably the series’ best. He also carried on the show’s quality in Season 4 as he pulled off an amazing first season of “Millennium”, which Fox forced him to dumb down in later seasons; not until “Battlestar Galactica” have I seen a first season as beautifully written as “Millennium” Season 1.
The film “Fight the Future” was a mistake because it couldn’t continue the strong mythology elements of Krychek, Skinner, and the Syndicate with the same level of complexity and consequently satisfying drama that the series could to appeal to new viewers at the cinema. Then, Season 6 and 7 were major declines in the writing of the show, despite respectable attempts to reinvent things; actually, except for the amazing “Sein Und Zeit” and “Closure” and a few other decent episodes, Season 7 is pretty much unforgivable. Season 8, however, had some solid, scary stand alones and very good mythology episodes, making it quite a bit better than Season 6 and 7, in some ways.
Lastly, what made “The X-Files” so great were the beautifully written and acted secondary characters that elevated the drama in Seasons 2 through 5; Carter seemed to have forgotten his notion of not casting famous people that distract from the role in his mistaken use of Amanda Peet and Xzibit, who were only passable performers of lackluster roles. He needs to figure out how to make those secondary characters meaningful again they way they were in Season 3.
It remains to be seen if Mr. Carter can pull off the amazing magic of Seasons 2 through 5 of “The X-Files” or “MIllennium” Season 1, but I think he can!
Actually, Ashlyn Gere appeared in the Episode “Blood” not “3″.
’bout time.
BRING BACK THE LONE GUNMEN!
I’m actually watching a mini Millennium marathon on DVD as I read this. So stoked!!! I just hope it doesn’t get sold to NBC or CBS.
“There is now talk about a potential third X-Files movie.” Except that really there’s been “talk” about a potential third film since the second one was announced, so this is kind of a pointless “observation” in the article.
OK, anyone who has read various different scripts that Carter wrote before he got X-Files to pilot will clearly see that the tone of the show — humor, genre mixture, procedural aspects of the show, even parts of the supernatural — were all present in his unproduced feature canon.
It should be noted that the context under which X-Files percolated would not happen today. But that is neither her not there. He is a great architect of ideas. He gravitates to interesting characters and stories that are unconventional and equal parts dark and funny. Look at the books he has attached himself to. One is a science fiction procedural and the other is textbook about a man who could project his mind’s images onto polaroid film — yes now very dated but cool.
He is to be frank more interested in surfing and that is healthy.
X-Files bought him his creative freedom and a deal with MRC insures he has control of his vision and does not have to operate within the very challenging development machines of the current system.
Would NOT be shocked if this ended up on Facebook or Netflix when all is said and done.
Mark my words, so astute on ICM’s part to go the MRC route.
As a huge X-Files/Chris Carter fan, I enjoyed reading this. Thanks.
yes to x files 3! super soldiers! 2012…nano tech! aliens!
Anyone know what the concept is?
Forget xfiles 3, bring Gillian on for a season of Californication.
That won’t happen. Nerds minds would explode.
You’re so dumb, he has nothing to do with Californication decisions!