But whatever happens, Carter and Spotnitz both believe the real key to The X-Files lies in Mulder and Scully's relationship, which promises to be a big part of the new film. The series ended with the duo in love and on the lam, and Carter says the movie will be ''true to the stories that we've told, and to that final episode.'' But just like here in the real world, time has passed. ''Mulder and Scully have not been frozen in ice,'' Duchovny says. ''They've been leading some kind of life, together or apart, in some parallel dimension. They've had experiences that we'll never know about.'' Despite paparazzi photos of two actors who look suspiciously like Duchovny and Anderson locked in an embrace, Carter is quick to caution against focusing too much on make-out sessions. ''It's two people who are passionate about the same thing, from different perspectives,'' he says. ''It's a romance of intellect.''
When the first X-Files film hit theaters in 1998, the TV show was at its creative and commercial peak. Launched in 1993, the series quickly built an obsessive audience — one that heralded the fanboy culture now fueling geek-TV fare like Lost and Heroes — and the movie pulled in a solid $84 million at the box office. Then things started to slip. Duchovny walked away in 2001 (after the previous season's legal dispute with Fox), and without him, the plot descended into chaos. The final season, premiering two months after 9/11, averaged only 9.3 million viewers (down from 19.8 million in its heyday), numbers both Carter and Spotnitz attribute, in part, to the mood of the country at the time. A second film was planned for release possibly as early as 2003, yet despite constant rumors that a script was almost done, a shooting date never materialized. The actors, exhausted from the series, were happy for the break — ''I needed a long sleep,'' says Anderson — but nobody thought the time off would last as long as it did. Eventually, Duchovny and Anderson moved on to other projects: Duchovny directed 2005's House of D and in 2008 won a Golden Globe for Showtime's Californication; Anderson moved to London, starring in the BBC's acclaimed 2005 drama Bleak House and 2006's The Last King of Scotland. ''I think I got my distance within a year or two of the series ending,'' Anderson says. ''I don't think any of us really needed six years.''
NEXT PAGE: ''I think it's possible that we could deliver. I don't think it's just bulls---, just trying to cash in on something that's half dead.''
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