HOLLYWOOD - The truth may have been out there, but the audiences weren't.

The long-awaited second X-Files movie, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, finally landed in theatres during the weekend, but by the time all the spooky mist cleared, all of $10 million marked the spot.

Where did all those once-rabid fans go?

Even distributor 20th Century Fox had been quietly expecting the movie to do closer to $15 million, which would have still been only half of what the last one, 1998's The X-Files, nabbed in its opening weekend.

The most logical answer is that there has simply been too much murky water under the bridge since the series left the air back in 2002.

Of course, it was never the filmmakers' intent for it to take that long -- blame the delay on tricky contract negotiations -- but the six-year absence really took its toll on a drama that, unlike some shows, didn't go on to a potent after-life in syndication.

But that's only part of the problem.

The decision on the part of director Chris Carter and co-writer Frank Spotnitz to make a stand-alone movie that felt closer in spirit to the old series might have been admirable -- the low-key results didn't feature any computer-generated swarms of killer bees this time out -- but some fans may have been under-whelmed at the prospect of paying the big bucks to see something that looked an awful lot like what they used to get for free.

With a similarly downscaled budget said to be in the $30-million range, with a fair chunk of that going to David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, Fox (the studio, not Mulder), won't take a huge hit on the disappointing returns, which at least comes as a bit of consolation in the wake of Meet Dave and Space Chimps, two other recent Fox misses.

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