I used to wonder why movies that seemed destined for box office failure got made. Thanks to X Files: I Want to Believe writer/producer Frank Spotnitz, I have a little clearer picture. People who make movies like to delude themselves.
Spotnitz was interviewed by Bloody Disgusting about the release on Tuesday of X-Files: I Want to Believe on DVD and a possible next X-Files movie. Now, the fact that an X-Files movie is being considered with the anemic box office performance of I Want to Believe is shocking to me. The movie made about $20 million domestically and $70 million worldwide. When you put that in the scale of movie box office performance it comes out right between “bad” and “pretty bad.” Of course, the reason for that performance is that there just aren’t as many people interested in the franchise as their were back in the 1990’s, right? Wrong! According to Spotnitz the reason for the crap BO numbers was because “The Dark Knight is a history making film at the box office, and we came out with our little dark film a week after. It was disappointing to be sure.” Wait, he’s not really blaming the poor box office on Batman, is he? He sure is; later he says, “I think what happened this past summer was a function of bad luck and bad timing with the release.”
Ok, the theory is there were a lot of people interested in seeing the X-Files, but they didn’t because The Dark Knight came out the week before. So how come Step-Brothers, released the same week as X-Files, pulled down $100 million domestically? What about Mamma Mia, released the same day as The Dark Knight on its way to hitting about $140 million in the U.S.
Clearly the reason that X-Files: I Want to Believe did poorly is not many people are interested in the X-Files anymore. When Spotnitz says, “the studio has not indicated another one yet, but there certainly is an audience for it.” That’s just it, there isn’t. New fans are not joining in and older fans are either moving on or dying. Spotnitz said if there were another movie it would focus on Alien Colonization. He’d like to keep doing X-Files movies forever, which is good news for his fans. Unfortunately, he needs a few more of them.
