David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are back as the agents investigating cases that no one else can unravel, cases that are simply inexplicable. This time, they are faced with their most dangerous and challenging mission, one that even the toughest and most unflappable X-Files fan will find disturbing. The emotional storyline will take the well-loved characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully to new heights as their highly charged relationship unfolds in completely unexpected ways.

In grand The X-Files tradition, the film’s storyline is being kept under wraps, known only to top studio brass and the project’s principal actors and filmmakers. What we do know is that this new film has steered clear of extra-terrestrials, strange unearthly beings or alien conspiracy theories. So while it’s fresh and different, it does, in true X-Files fashion, also deal with the supernatural. And Mulder continues his unshakable quest for the truth and Scully continues to be the passionate, ferociously intelligent but pragmatic doctor.

“The film is very dark,” says producer Frank Spotnitz. “We looked back at a lot of the standalone scary stories we did on the show and went for the theme we found most frightening because you believed it was really happening. Our ethic in the X-Files was ‘it is only as scary as it is believable’. We want the audience to go to bed thinking, ‘Maybe that could really happen’. The more you can get into people’s heads and frighten them, the better. That is our goal obviously. And the movie we’ve chosen to make is, for us, the most frightening because it is the most credible.”

Created by Chris Carter in 1993, the cult TV series chronicles the lives and adventures of Mulder and Scully, two FBI agents with vastly different personalities who are tasked to investigate unsolved cases within the Bureau, which were invariably those involving the paranormal.

Unlike the first The X-Files movie that was released in 1998, Carter and Spotnitz’s new film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, doesn’t require audiences to understand the complex mythology of the TV series. “The first movie was kind of an epic episode of the show, but The X-Files: I Want to Believe is a real, standalone movie,” explains Carter. “If the show hadn’t existed, this is a story that would still have found its way to the big screen.”

After 10 long years since the first film – and six years since the close of the series – Carter and Spotnitz felt the time was right for a new The X-Files movie, not just for the sake of the show’s legions of fans, but to introduce these well-loved characters to a new generation of viewers. “It struck me over the last few years, talking to college-age kids, that many of them really don’t know the show,” says Carter. “A 20-year-old today would have been too young when the show debuted (16 years ago). So there’s a whole new audience for The X-Files. And this film was made to satisfy them, as well as our long-time fans.”

The X-Files: I Want to Believe opens July 24.