The truth, in this case, was about money. “There was a…I’d call it a profit-sharing disagreement between Fox and me,” Carter explains. Carter and Fox finally reached an agreement over the disputed television syndication rights from the series in early 2007, and things kicked into high gear.

“It was almost like I was hanging up the phone with my attorneys telling me it was resolved, and the other phone was ringing, and it was Fox saying, ‘Let’s do this film. It’s now or never,’” he recalls. The sense of urgency was justified, and not just because the show had already been off the air for five years. “Fox saw a Writers Guild strike looming in the next year. SAG [the Screen Actors Guild] and the DGA [Directors Guild of America] also had the ability to strike, which could make this a movie that wouldn’t be made for two years. Basically, it was now or never. So we chose now.”

Beyond the fact? that the story is a stand-alone “monster-of-the-week” not entangled in the show’s elaborate conspiracy-theory mythology and takes place somewhere with snow (you can see the white stuff in the film’s trailer), details about the film are hard to come by. While for most filmmakers a “top secret plot” is just a promotional ploy and “leaks” to Internet gossip sites are the norm, Carter plays the game his own way. You’ll find not a murmur on the usual fan-boy sites like aintitcoolnews.com, and even more focused sites like xfilesnews.com have been reduced to leaking such revelations as the name of the film’s production company.

From the beginning, Carter knew he wanted the film to be a stand-alone to welcome in more fans, and he wanted to shoot around Vancouver, where the television series was mostly shot. “We needed a certain mood for this movie,” he says. “I think in Vancouver, the darkness and the mist and the weather and the environment lend themselves beautifully to the kind of storytelling we were doing.”

After a six-year silence, during which Carter has no film or television credits to his name, could this film signal his readiness to get back in the game? Working on network television seems out of the question. He speaks with frank envy of cable’s more leisurely shooting schedule: “When The Sopranos came to their last season, they had shot 80-some episodes. Wow, that’s the way to do a TV series. We shot 202 episodes in our run.”

But even at cable’s pace, Carter isn’t so sure he’s ready to commit. “There’s just a lot of things that are changing the way someone like me—as a 51-year-old man—wants to look at spending, if you’re lucky, five years of your life producing something.”

If Carter has any ideas about a possible series, he’s not saying anything about it. Years ago, when Carter was pitching the X-Files series around Hollywood, he got a piece of advice from noted production designer Rick Carter (no relation). “When he read it, he said, ‘I like this, but do yourself a big favor by not showing anything. Keeping everything in the dark and the shadows.’” That’s advice Carter clearly has taken to heart.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe opens July 25.