While the first X-Files movie - release during the height of the series' popularity in 1998 - was a box office hit, the same can't be said its a sequel. Released in 2008, a full decade after the first one, The X-Files: I Want To Believe cost only $35 million to make, but wound up only making $20.9 here and $47 million abroad. These numbers didn't exactly tell the studio that audiences were clamoring for more stories featuring FBI Agents Mulder and Scully, so the idea of a third movie has long been considered an unlikely possibility. All that out there, David Duchovny still isn't giving up hope that there is a future for the X-Files.
With Duchovny's long-running showtime series Californiacatation coming to an end this weekend, Rolling Stone recently sat down to talk with the actor, and during the course of the interview the X-Files star admitted that he still hasn't quite put Fox Mulder behind him. Asked if he would be game for a third film in the franchise, Duchovny said,
"I would always want to do it. I wish we'd done more already. I wish the second one did better business. I think it did OK business, but not the kind of business where you get to do another one right away."
What makes this case interesting is that many star TV actors from the '90s have spent their entire careers running away from the characters they played, hoping to avoid being typecast and only being recognized for one thing despite their personally known versatility. Duchovny admits that there was a time when he was part of this crowd, but the work he has done since the X-Files ended has allowed him to feel differently about the potential to revisit the character that gave him his big break. "Once I was able to branch out and do some other movies and do Californication, I didn't feel like, 'People only think I do that,'" the actor said. "I no longer have that anxiety."
Duchovny is arguably still most recognized for his role on the X-Files, which was one of the biggest pop culture hits of the 90s, but he has certainly kept busy on both the big screen and small. Likewise, co-star Gillian Anderson, who played Mulder's partner Dana Scully, has had the same level of success, most recently appearing in a number of episodes of Hannibal (the series finale suggesting an even bigger role for her in the show's third season).
In addition to doing poorly with audiences, X-Files: I Want To Believe was also largely trashed by critics, which opens the debate: is a third X-Files movie something that people really want. I expect a lot of you are pretty split on this idea, so let us know what you think in the comments section below.
