You don’t have to believe in UFOs or government conspiracies to write for “The X-Files.” “We’re all fairly agnostic on all those subjects…,” says Vince Gilligan, co-executive producer and writer, in a recent phone interview from Los Angeles about what it’s like writing for a hot TV show. “I don’t disbelieve in any of this stuff we write about, but there’s a big difference in not disbelieving it and actively believing it.” “The X-Files” heads into its seventh and perhaps final season this Sunday, N ... [Continua a leggere]

Poor, poor Fox. Imagine the painful musings that are now going through executives’ heads: “No one is watching us … no one is watching us.” The mantra has picked up in recent days. No matter what we do, what we put on (with the exception of “Ally McBeal’s” premiere) the song remains the same. No one is watching Fox. And no one knows exactly why. The numbers tell a particularly brutal tale. Last week – with the World Series airing Tuesday and Wednesday – virtually all Fox’ shows drew under a 10 percent audience share. The ... [Continua a leggere]

“The X-Files” returns Sunday on Fox for its seventh season, scaring and mystifying viewers with its tales of the paranormal and the unexplainable. But though he knows how the cliffhanger that launches the season premiere turns out, the ultimate truth is still out there for the show’s creator, Chris Carter. That is, whether this season will be the end of the line for Carter and stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson–and the show itself. The contracts for Carter and Duchovny, who plays FBI Agent Fox Mulder, are both up this season. And Anderson, who portr ... [Continua a leggere]

This is the part of the TV season when the luster of everyone thinking life was sweet gets rubbed down to the awful truth: Even in the midst of a great season, shows have to die. Usually, this period begins much earlier — like the week after most of them debut. NBC’s “Mike O’Malley” was the first show to get canceled, followed shortly thereafter by CBS’s “Work With Me.” No problem there — most everyone thought they were lousy. Much more difficult — and telling — is when shows with potential get the ax. When Fox kil ... [Continua a leggere]

The second outing of “Ryan Caulfield” and third appearance of “Harsh Realm” last week equaled Fox’s lowest-ever Friday-night ratings, averaging a 2.3 Nielsen household rating and 4 share for the night. The death of executive producer Chris Carter’s “Harsh Realm” comes weeks before Carter’s flagship series “The X-Files” even airs its season premiere. Fox “botched” the launch of “Harsh Realm,” a disappointed Carter told Daily Variety. “I think in the end it looks rather misguided to have ... [Continua a leggere]

K: Kevin B: Bean ([1]recently moved to Seattle and co-hosts from his home) L: Lisa (third co-host/traffic reporter) K: This is the world-famous KROQ, 106.7 K-R-O-Q. Kevin and Bean Show at 8:12. B: I don’t know if this is true or not, maybe I’m just assuming, but I like to think that we’re a good luck charm for Chris Carter. That’s why he comes in to see us every time he has a new project. K(laughing): I’m sure that’s it. B: With each new launch. K: …I’m sure that’s it. Chris, welcome. C: Thank you very much. K: Always ... [Continua a leggere]

When Chris Carter unveiled “The X-Files” in 1993, it premiered with little fanfare and no expectations. Tomorrow, when Carter’s newest series, “Harsh Realm,” debuts on Fox, things will be a little different – but, Carter insists, they will also be quite similar. “The trick,” Carter said earlier this week, “is going to be to get people to come to the show and hook into it. “Because it has, like ‘The X-Files,’ a mythology that is important to it, but it will also have good stand-alone stories to tell as well. I& ... [Continua a leggere]

Chris Carter, the creator of “The X-Files” is used to dealing in strange realities; this season he has created another in the new series “Harsh Realm,” which has its premiere this Friday night at 9. So if any producer could deal with the strangeness of working on a show with a star, David Duchovny, who is suing his network, and who, in his suit, accused Mr. Carter of accepting “hush money,” it is probably the man who made millions of viewers try to figure out the “mythology” of “The X-Files.” In a telephone news conferen ... [Continua a leggere]

Chris Carter speaks in a virtual tongue. His language is an amalgam of almosts and maybes, what ifs and if…thens. His freshest foray into the televisionary, Harsh Realm, (premiering October 8 on FOX), is his most explicitly virtual creation — a world of games, thought experiments, and hypotheticals. “Harsh Realm suggests a possible future scenario, but it is the worst-case scenario,” Carter explains from Los Angeles before leaving for Vancouver, British Columbia, to begin production on the new series. “It is about a man realizing that the world we ... [Continua a leggere]

X-Files Magazine: How does it feel to begin work on the much rumored final season? Spotnitz: Every story feels like it’s got a lot of weight attached to it because they may be the last 22. We’re being careful about what stories we choose to tell. One of the very first things we did was sit down and talk about all of our major characters and where they’re going to go and how they’re going to end. Where’s Skinner going to end up? Where’s Krycek going to end up? What’s the last image you’ll see of CSM? It’s a little sad actually ... [Continua a leggere]

In season seven’s first stand-alone, Vince Gilligan tells the tale of a monster’s tragic eating disorder. Vince Gilligan has everyone fooled. The X-Files writer/co-executive producer best known for quirky episodes like Seasons Four’s “Small Potatoes” and Season Five’s “Bad Blood” projects an unmistakable Southern charm; in person, he is amiable, easy-going, good-natured. But lurking somewhere deep within his psyche is a villainous imp. There must be. There’s simply no other explanation for how someone so unassuming could send ... [Continua a leggere]

As if TV and movies aren’t far enough removed from reality, this year’s release of The Matrix, the Spanish feature Open Your Eyes and now Chris Carter’s television series Harsh Realm are celebrating the potential of virtual reality, a world that exists only in our mind’s eye and in some computer drive somewhere. It’s a topic that TV has tackled before (anybody remember VR5?), but until now virtual reality has been a place where the average television viewer hasn’t been interested enough to go to. But when the creator of Fox Television’s ... [Continua a leggere]

Fans of The X-Files have been waiting for the truth a lot of years now. The truth they are about to hear probably isn’t what they were expecting: The show is over. Anyone who thinks there’s even the smallest amount of hope for another season is living in some kind of elaborately constructed Chris Carter dream world that is wonderfully disconnected to the truly ugly, often horrifying world of Hollywood. Given that fans of the show – and I’ve been one since the pilot episode – tend to know events months before they appear in print or in episodes, the ... [Continua a leggere]

“I was never a science fiction fan. I spoke to a group once, and they were shocked that I’d never seen Star Trek. But I’m just not a science fiction fan. It’s never interested me.” It’s a bit of a shock admission from a man who, thanks to the massive worldwide success of his first SF series, The X-Files, now has the creative autonomy and network clout to produce whatever he damn wants… and has returned to the SF fold for the third time. With the X-movie franchise now assured and Millennium into its third series, the former surf-boy jour ... [Continua a leggere]

Frank Spotnitz knows The Truth. Chris Carter, creator of the paranoia-prone Fox drama The X-Files, has shared with Spotnitz his vision for what has come to be called The Mythology. That places Spotnitz, a Phoenix native and one of the show’s executive producers, inside a tiny band of Earthlings who knows how the series’ long-running alien-invasion story arc will resolve itself a year from now. For the record, he’s not sharing. Would you? After tonight’s season finale, only 22 episodes of The X-Files remain. According to Spotnitz, six or seven of them wi ... [Continua a leggere]