X-Files creator Chris Carter has released a new director's cut of his 2008 film The X-Files: I Want to Believe, restoring the darker, more horror-driven vision he originally intended before Fox insisted on cuts to secure a PG-13 rating. The reworked version, retitled The X-Files: I Want to Believe – Vrach Frankenshteyn, matters to fans because it offers Carter's unfiltered take on a film that was poorly received on release, with critics at the time criticising its plot despite the movie's modest box office success.

The new title nods to the story's real-life inspiration: a Cleveland doctor who successfully transplanted a monkey's head onto another monkey, which Carter says shaped the film's "Frankenstein" themes around organ harvesting and body mutilation. The original film starred David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reprising their roles as Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, investigating a case involving a psychic and missing women in West Virginia, separate from the show's alien conspiracy mythology. The new R-rated cut launches on Hulu and Disney Plus on 14 August, 18 years after the theatrical release.