The X-Files Movie Is Getting Its Very Own ‘Snyder Cut’ & The Trailer Is Finally Here

Few television shows have ever been as comfortable making audiences uncomfortable as The X-Files. Mulder and Scully spent years investigating everything from alien conspiracies to monsters capable of making viewers reconsider what might be hiding under the bed, and some of the series’ most memorable episodes remain genuinely disturbing decades later. That made it especially strange when one of their trips to the big screen arrived with some of its nastier edges sanded down. The movie wasn’t exactly beloved when it hit theaters, either, leaving behind the tantalizing question of whether something better was hiding somewhere in the editing room. Nearly two decades later, its creator has been given the increasingly rare opportunity to go back and bring his original creation to life. And now, the trailer for that original creation is finally here.

Hulu has released the first trailer for The X-Files: I Want to Believe Vrach Frankenshteyn. The new director’s cut from The X-Files series creator and director Chris Carter is set to arrive on Hulu on August 14th and will restore material that was removed from the theatrical cut, giving viewers a the more disturbing tale than what was originally intended. You can get a little taste of what that entails and the elements that will add to the scares for viewers for yourself in the trailer for the director’s cut, which you can check out for yourself below.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe Was Supposed to Be Much Scarier

I Want to Believe was always an unusual second movie for The X-Files. Rather than continuing the massive alien conspiracy at the heart of 1998’s Fight the Future, Carter returned Mulder and Scully to their Monster-of-the-Week roots. Years after leaving the FBI, the pair are pulled back into an investigation involving missing women, gruesome medical experiments, and a disgraced priest who claims his psychic visions can lead investigators to the victims.

It was exactly the kind of standalone nightmare The X-Files could do incredibly well, but Carter has since said the version he originally made was “too scary” and had to be pulled back for its theatrical release. The resulting PG-13 movie arrived in 2008 to a mixed response and never developed the same reputation as the series’ best horror stories. This new R-rated cut gives Carter the opportunity to finally make the scary movie he says he intended.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe has always been one of the franchise’s most divisive chapters. Rather than leaning into aliens or government conspiracies, Chris Carter crafted a bleak serial killer mystery built around body harvesting, human experimentation, and a modern Frankenstein story. It’s exactly the kind of grounded horror that has produced some of The X-Files’ most memorable episodes, yet many fans have long wondered whether the theatrical release softened Carter’s original vision.

The X-Files Finally Gets Its Own Snyder Cut

While comparisons to Zack Snyder’s Justice League may seem hyperbolic at first glance, the parallel becomes clearer when you consider how long The X-Files fandom has been asking for this material. Snyder fans campaigned for roughly four years before HBO Max finally released the filmmaker’s original vision in 2021. The X-Files faithful have been wondering about Chris Carter’s longer cut for decades, making this less of a new movement than the potential payoff to one of the franchise’s oldest “what ifs.”

There’s another similarity, too. Just as HBO Max used Zack Snyder’s Justice League as an event release to give subscribers something they couldn’t find anywhere else, a restored version of The X-Files could become exactly the kind of exclusive streaming event that helps Disney+ celebrate one of its most beloved legacy series. The timing also works in Disney+’s favor. With Ryan Coogler developing a new The X-Files series, interest in the franchise is only going to increase. Making Carter’s longer cut of the film available exclusively on Disney+ would give longtime fans something they’ve wanted for years while giving newcomers another reason to revisit one of science fiction’s most enduring franchises before its next chapter arrives.

Maybe this time, we’ll want to believe even harder.