10 Movie Sequels That Took Way Too Long

8. The X-Files: I Want To Believe (10 Years, 1 Month)

The Pitch: 10 years following the first X-Files film, and a whole 6 years since the series itself finished, creator Chris Carter wrote and directed a second X-Files movie, I Want to Believe, that functioned as a standalone one-off story for Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson). The Result: A disappointingly generic movie that could pretty much have been any regular episode of the series dragged out to feature length. The series had been finished for over half a decade, so why on Earth did Carter think that settling for a detached story like this would make it worth watching? If we were going to be interested in seeing Mulder and Scully again, it had to develop them further as characters and return to the "mytharc" that defined the series and the previous film. The movie was financially successful, though made only $68 million against a $30 million budget, which when compared to the previous movie's $189 million box office haul, is hugely disappointing. Had Carter struck while the iron was hot and got a movie released by 2005 and not deferred to such a generic storyline, then perhaps this would have been a much greater success. By 2008, people had moved on from The X-Files, and it just seemed kinda desperate.