R-Rated Director’s Cut of ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe’ Finally Coming to Hulu in August with Intriguing New Title
Not long ago, we reported that a director’s cut of The X-Files: I Want to Believe would be coming to Hulu. Well, after a bit of a delay, that finally appears to be happening, as Gizmodo reports that the film will now arrive on the streamer on August 14th. But it won’t be under quite the same title.
The outlet notes that the official title for the director’s cut is The X-Files: I Want to Believe Vrach Frankenshteyn. Try repeating that five times fast.
Apparently, the Russian in the title translates to “Victor Frankenstein”. As the outlet mentions, no, ole Victor is not a character in the film. The additional words are likely nothing more than a fun play on the fact that the film has been stitched back together and risen from the grave after all these years.
The second X-Files film to be released, I Want to Believe arrived in 2008 from director/creator Chris Carter. It followed Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson), who are called back to duty when a priest claims to have psychic visions about a kidnapped FBI agent. The film saw modest returns, but I can’t say it was a rave hit at the time.
Sometime ago, Carter appeared on the Fail Better with David Duchovny podcast, where he had this to say about I Want to Believe and a director’s cut: “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, [the censors] are more permissive than they are for the movies.“
Continued Carter, “Now I have a chance to go back and make the scary movie that I always intended. 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.“
Listen, I have no issue with a PG-13 rating…when the project is intended for it. But the fact that Carter had to cut and cut and cut until his vision was slashed to ribbons? That’s how you end up with a watered-down film, and audiences clearly felt that with I Want to Believe. So, the fact that this director’s cut could be the “scary” version that the filmmaker intended? Well, let’s just say Hulu has me abducted and seated.
For what it’s worth, Disney noted that the cut Disney will be R-rated and will “faithfully restore the filmmaker’s original vision”. I want to believe.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe director’s cut is slated to arrive on Hulu on August 14th.
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