According to Variety, HBO executives approached Spotnitz some time about the possibility of developing a medical thriller. Given that Spotnitz spent eight years writing for The X-Files, it's not terribly surprising that he gave the idea a near-futuristic twist. Humanitas takes place in a future more medically advanced than our own, where doctors are able to manipulate genes and create viruses, resulting in a host of ethical dilemmas and general anxiety that a pandemic is imminent.

Spotnitz's second project with HBO is flung much farther into the future. He is looking to adapt The World Inside, Robert Silverberg's novel about humanity in the year 2381. The human population has exploded thanks to a strictly enforced culture of free love and uncontrolled reproduction, and most of the world's population lives inside vast, sprawling buildings and never go outside. It's an apparently utopian society of unfettered sex, happiness drugs, and mutual reliance, where everyone lives in harmony. But it's also a closely monitored and regulated society with no privacy or individuality, and deviation from the social norms can be punished by death. But a computer engineer in one city finds he has perverse thoughts of leaving the building and exploring the world outside.

Of course, there's no guarantee that either show will get picked up, but it's encouraging to see HBO, a channel whose recent speculative offerings have tended more toward modern fantasy, take an interest in shows with a scientific and futuristic bent.

[Variety]

Sure, you might think that flopping at the box office (well, relatively; it was a very cheap movie to make by summer blockbuster standards, after all) and being slated by critics might have made that a slightly more closed question, but that's because you weren't paying attention to the people that matter: the fans. Spotnitz explains:

I do think the fans did love it, although the popular media didn't pick up on that.

That damn popular media, paying more attention to all of the overwhelming majority of Americans who decided not to go and see the movie. Damn their anti-conspiracy-exposing agenda. So what news were we robbed of, according to Spotnitz?

My impression is that it was overwhelmingly well received by fans. But there is no denying that the box office was very disappointing. We've done dramatically better overseas. We'll probably hit $70 million worldwide, which is a profit.

A profit indeed... and one that just might fuel Spotnitz's vision of an eternal franchise:

I've always felt that "The X-Files" could go on forever. The believer/skeptic dynamic was such a great storytelling vehicle, and the fact that we could use anything we don't understand makes the possibilities limitless. There are so many X-Files that we could keep telling these for years if there is an audience.

You know what I want to believe? That that's not going to happen. Wasn't a nine-season and two movie run enough?

Reflections: Frank Spotnitz [Comic Book Resources]

Carter kicked things off by saying the film was worth the wait,"Because it will scare the pants off you. You'll see Mulder and Scully again in a whole new way."

Suddenly a bunch of adolescent girls behind us started yelling at Duchovny, "Can you give us your pants?" Sadly he did not oblige. A fan asked asked about the X-Files and 9/11 controversy. (For those who don't know, the pilot episode of X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen is about a plot to crash a hijacked plane into the WTC.) Carter passed the question to Spotnitz, who said:

We were really upset, and worried that somehow we had inspired the plot. But we were relieved to discover that the plot pre-dated The Lone Gunmen, and that 9/11 had nothing to do with our work. And then once we realized that, my next thought was how the government hadn't known about this plot. There have been a lot of conspiracy theories about the connection between 9/11 and The Lone Gunman, but none of them are true.

There was lots more we could have done but we ended at the right time. Things had changed after 9/11... and now the mood is right once more.

Anderson said it was hard to get back into character. "I had a really bad couple of days. I thought it would be really easy to step into it and I actually sucked for 48 hours."

Carter said, "I've always thought the series was a search for God."

Anderson said:

One of my favorite episodes is Bad Blood. Probably because it's one of the only episodes I remember. It was each of our ideas of what took place in an event, and we both got to play the other person's perception of ourselves. So I was moody and bitchy and David was going on and on and on [with the talking].