page_title: Chris Carter (screenwriter)
section_title: The X-Files and success
hierarchical_section_title: Chris Carter (screenwriter) / Career / The X-Files and success
caption_attribution_description: English: Chris Carter at the 2013 San Diego Comic Con International in San Diego, California.
context_page_description: Christopher Carl Carter is an American television and film producer, director and writer. Born in Bellflower, California, Carter graduated with a degree in journalism from California State University, Long Beach before spending thirteen years working for Surfing Magazine. After beginning his television career working on television films for Walt Disney Studios, Carter rose to fame in the early 1990s after creating the science fiction-supernatural television series The X-Files for the Fox network. The X-Files earned high viewership ratings, and led to Carter's being able to negotiate the creation of future series.
  Carter has his own television production company, Ten Thirteen Productions, wherein he went on to create three more series for the network—Millennium, a doomsday-themed series which met with critical approval and low viewer numbers; Harsh Realm, which was canceled after three episodes had aired; and The Lone Gunmen, a spin-off of The X-Files which lasted for a single season.
context_section_description: Carter's new series would take its stylistic inspiration from Kolchak, while thematically reflecting his experiences growing up during the Watergate scandal. Carter also drew inspiration from his friend John E. Mack's survey of American beliefs in ufology, which indicated that three percent of the population believed they had been abducted by aliens. Roth warmed to the idea upon hearing of the influence of Kolchak, believing that vampires—one of the central antagonists of the original series—would be popular with audiences given the interest being shown in the upcoming film Interview with the Vampire, although Carter insisted on an extraterrestrial-focused series. However, Carter had never been interested in science fiction before this point, professing to have briefly read one novel each by Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert A. Heinlein. Basing his characters instead on those found in the English television series The Avengers, Carter took an eighteen-page treatment for his new project—by now titled The X-Files—to a pitch meeting at Fox, where it was soon rejected. With the help of Roth, Carter was able to arrange a second pitch meeting, at which the network reluctantly agreed to greenlight a pilot for the series.
  After finding the series' two starring leads in Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, Carter was given a budget of $2 million to produce a pilot episode. The series aired on Friday nights on the Fox network, being broadcast in tandem with The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. in what was perceived to be an unpopular timeslot. The series earned relatively impressive Nielsen ratings for its Friday timeslot, and was given a full twenty-four episode order. The series' popularity and critical acclaim built over the course of its second and third seasons, and saw it earning its first Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Drama and breaking the record for highest price paid by a network for rights to air re-runs, fetching $600,000 per episode from Fox's sister network FX. After Carter's initial three-year signing for Fox had ended, the success of the series allowed him to negotiate a five-year contract with several additional perks, including the guarantee of a feature film adaptation to be produced by the parent company's film studio, and the greenlighting of Carter's next television project. In March 2015, it was confirmed that Carter was set to executive produce and write for the revival of The X-Files, which was set for a six-episode event series. In 2017 it was announced that The X-Files would return to Fox with a ten-episode season 11, with Carter set to executive produce and write.  Both Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny returned, as well as veteran writers Glen Morgan, Darin Morgan, and Jim Wong, and newcomers Gabe Rotter, Benjamin Van Allen, and Brad Follmer. The eleventh season has received generally positive if somewhat lukewarm reviews from critics, but ratings fell dramatically, and Gillian Anderson has stated she will not play Scully again.
caption: Carter in July 2013
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