Chris Carter Talks X-Files 3 And…Simon Pegg?

By David Wharton | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

CarterWith The X-Files celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, there’s been a renewed round of buzz and speculation about whether the show might return for a third film. The main cast has said they’d be game for it, and we’re already getting the further adventures of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in IDW’s in-canon comic series, The X-Files: Season 10. Series creator Chris Carter definitely has some ideas about what we’d see in a third X-Files film…and it turns out The World’s End’s Simon Pegg might be along for the ride as well.

Speaking in the current issue of Empire Magazine, Carter doesn’t have the X-Files 3 confirmation fans might be hoping for, but he does keep hope alive that Mulder and Scully might eventually return to the big screen. Unfortunately, as much as Carter, David Duchovny, and Gillian Anderson might be interested in putting together another X-Files movie, the decision to go-ahead lies with Twentieth Century Fox. But if and when that does happen, Carter already has some ideas sketched out, and fans will be intrigued to hear that he’s not ignoring that whole 2012 alien invasion date established in the TV series:

I think all of us are interested in putting the band back together. I have an idea for a third movie in my head. The [colonization] date has passed and that is something we wouldn’t ignore. For the second movie, we only had the budget for a standalone story, but we want to go back to the mythology.

The potential return to the show’s alien mythology is bound to have fans breathing a sigh of relief. 2008’s The X-Files: I Want to Believe veered away from the big UFO storylines for a smaller, less ambitious plot that came off like one of the show’s more forgettable episodes, except stretched to almost two hours’ length. If you’re going to bring X-Files back for another cinematic outing, by all means go big or don’t go at all. The last thing anyone needs is another mediocre X-Files movie.

The question, of course, is whether Fox has any interest in another X-Files movie, and whether they’d give Carter and company a decent budget to do it right. With the 20th anniversary, this would have been a perfect time to announce a new X-Files project — like during the Comic-Con reunion panel, for instance — but so far there’s nothing. The ongoing comic series is a treat for fans craving more of Mulder and Scully, but I have to wonder if too much time has passed for Fox to gamble on a third film. Plus, the bitter cynic inside me keeps whispering that it’s far more likely at this point that they’d greenlight a remake of the series rather than another sequel. Sigh…

Still, if X-Files 3 does happen at some point, Carter says Simon Pegg might be involved. Say wha…? That odd connection comes via Anderson, who worked with Pegg on 2008’s How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Apparently she was “a big fan.” As Carter explains, “We actually thought about putting him in the second movie, but there was no part for him. I certainly would think about him if we were to go forward in any way.”

It makes you wonder where Pegg would fit in on an X-Files movie. Maybe an eccentric conspiracy theorist of some sort? Maybe the D’artagnan to the Lone Gunmen’s Three Musketeers?