I am very grateful to Matt Allair at The X-Files Lexicon for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the interview he conducted with Chris Carter very recently! Truly, this is an honor and one of the big highlights for Matt’s XFL and for EatTheCorn: getting to talk with the source of it all, the mind behind The X-Files, Millennium, Harsh Realm, The Lone Gunmen, and now The After!

Carter has been doing several interviews promoting The After: TV Guide, The Verge, KLTA, TV Wise, X-Files News, Studio System News, and even an “As Me Anything” at Reddit — unprecedented for someone who hasn’t been too keen on using social networks!

The pilot for The After is available for viewing worldwide with a single registration to Amazon.com, and viewer reviews should still be factored in in Amazon’s decision process to turn it into a series or not — a decision it might be making in a few days’ or weeks’ time! As a bonus, an IMDB poll that Amazon is looking at.

The XFL interview is available here. Or you can find it below!

Photo: Chris Carter directing on ‘The After’ Set; still courtesy of Amazon Studios

Chris Carter: Hi Matt, how are you?

Matt Allair: Hi Chris. It’s a great honor to speak with you. I really enjoyed the pilot and congratulations on the show.

Chris: Thank you so much.

Orodromeus: We first heard about The After well over a year ago, in October 2012, when Marc Rosen had been promoting it to the MIPCOM expo. For how long have you been actually developing this story?

Chris: I had the idea about six years ago, and then I finally sat down to write it about two years ago, so that’s pretty much the timetable.

Matt: The X-Files and Millennium thematically had a dialog between science and religion; will The After be a continuation of that dialog, or do you see it going in a completely different direction?

Chris: No, I think for me, those were the two big questions in life (chuckle) and so they inform everything, even if they don’t inform it directly. So I’m sure you’ll see those questions come up, but hopefully in as entertaining a way as possible.

Orodromeus: Selling The X-Files to FOX famously involved bringing forth statistics about alien abductions in the USA. What did it take to sell The After?

Chris: Really the script just sort of sold itself. I got it out there, Amazon saw it and liked it, which is pretty much all of the sales pitch I had. I met with Joe Lewis from Amazon once and we had a nice conversation, but beyond that I think the script sold itself.

Matt: You have been known for your innovative casting decisions. The After has an interesting range of fairly new actors; are there any current actors you’ve worked with who really stand out?

Chris: I think the whole cast is excellent, of course. Four have never been seen [before], certainly in the US, Louise Monot who’s our French actress. It was kind of a miracle that we were able to cast her, because we were told that she couldn’t get a work VISA, etc…But, I think she actually became available before we started shooting.

Orodromeus: You recently mentioned in interviews that you felt there is more freedom and flexibility in cable television instead of network television. What has been your experience with the new medium of online distribution so far? What are your expectations?

Chris: Well, my expectations are that this is the future. So while I think that while it’s new to me, and new to many, it will become the norm. I’m not, of course, used to the idea that you make something and then it’s put on trial, as it were, with a jury of hundreds-of-thousands of people. That’s a new experience, but it’s exciting at the same time.

Matt: Your track record for bringing in important writers who do groundbreaking work is quite impressive. Have your criteria changed over the years? Are there certain strengths you always look for when you hire a writer?

Chris: Yes, that they are imaginative, that they are in sync with my characters as I’ve imagined them, and the concept of the show, but mostly that they’ve had a body of work that shows originality.

Orodromeus: Over ten years have passed since your last show went off the air, yet there are still strong followers of that work, be it online communities of The X-Files and Millennium or the comics continuation of The X-Files. How does the creator feel to see his work live on in these ways? Is there a sense of pride and accomplishment, or rather a need to distance yourself so as to focus on new creative endeavors?

Chris: I don’t feel the need to distance myself, I always want to do something that excites me, that I feel is different and hopefully original, and I think that’s what we’ve got here with The After. For me, it’s a miracle that 20 years later people are still as interested in The X-Files as they are. There’s a whole new generation interested, and that’s amazing to me. Is that an once-in-a-lifetime experience? Maybe, I hope not.

Matt: Has Amazon Studios given you a lot of support in the production of the Pilot?

Chris: Amazon was terrific. They had really smart notes that helped make the project better which is what you want with a partner. They have been a terrific support for us and a guiding light.

Orodromeus: The After has a whole new crew. Can we expect to see any of the people you collaborated with previously in the crew?

Chris: It’s always hard to tell because people are busy, and certainly good people are always in demand. You know, it will be a combination of who wants to come work on the show – that we’ve worked with before because we love working with friends and other collaborators. But we are also looking forward to working with some new folks and faces.

Matt: Will this show being developed for AMC go in a completely different direction from The After? Is there anything new you are willing to share about this other project?

Chris: I’m not able to talk about it, but it’s not really directly connected to The After. I think you’ll see there is connective tissue there, but not obvious tissue. It based on a book that was given to me by AMC. I read that book, I didn’t see how it could be a TV series. They asked me to read it again, I did, and all of a sudden it just hit me–how you could do it. So that’s where I am in the process.

Matt: Back when you started as a writer for Disney and NBC, you worked on developing cop shows and family comedies, I even recall you wrote a script based on your surfing experiences. Now that you are getting back into television, would you like work in a genre outside of what you are known for?

Chris: Yeah, I’m interested in so many things that all of a sudden to become stereotyped as a science fiction writer. It’s funny to me because I never would have described myself as that before The X-Files. I did write something based on my–less my surfing experiences than my experiences with the surf culture–when I graduated from college. I did my journalism internship at Surfing magazine. I ended up staying at the magazine for five years. I had a tremendous experience and education there that was not just about the surf world, but about business, but about putting something out serially. So, that was a fantastic experience and I’d love to write about that–and in fact I did with a script that never got made. I’d love to revisit that.

Orodromeus: With the wide use of internet and discussion boards, the days of The X-Files were an important moment for the audience-creator interaction. Now it appears like viewer feedback for the pilot of The After will be part of the evaluation of the project on behalf of Amazon. Could you discuss the process a bit, and whether you see this as helpful or not?

Chris: I’m not reading the comments, it’s only helpful to me in that other people are and it’s helping them to evaluate responses that I’d call are more personal, in a personalized way. For me, as I have always done, I am going to try tell a story, a saga, that is interesting to me, because if I don’t do that–it’s beyond me to do that–I don’t know how to do something that doesn’t interest me on some kind of deeper level.

Matt Allair: With your previous projects, you have been known for developing mythology arcs, as well as stand-alone tales, will The After follow similar formats to your past work, or will it be more like the usual episodic television format?

Chris: It will be more like my past work. It will have a mythology, but it will have stand-alone episodes, as well.

Orodromeus: Hopefully The After will move forward with a full series order. How clear set are the other episodes? Would you work with other writers to develop them?

Chris: I do, yes, we will sit with the writers. They will sit with me and Gabe Rotter, the co-executive producer, and we will plot the series. If we are so lucky to go to series, there are no guarantees here even though I think the response has been positive, you just never know. It could go either way.

Matt Allair: Now that you have a few features under your belt, are you gaining more confidence as a director? You’ve worked with many directors in television over a decade; did they help influence or shape your choices with The After?

Chris: Absolutely. David Nutter originally was extremely helpful to me. My first episode, my first directing experience, David really helped me. He dug in there, he actually blocked scenes for me to show me how he did it, and it showed me, not only his style, but the economy and the way he thought about shots and editorial. That was extremely helpful to me. I’m still working off those lessons. Rob Bowman and Kim Manners in particular were very, very instructive. They had such a vast experience in television. They knew how to go fast, but to make it beautiful and cinematic. I’ll never forget Kim who’s no longer with us. In every episode, he tried to do something with a great degree of difficulty. I was talking to Bill Roe, the DP on the last four years of the show, and he said that in fact, ‘that’s right, Kim would always try something that was too hard’ during the show, and that’s what I think made his episodes stand out and that made the show visually superior.

Matt: Thank you so much for taking time to do this.

Chris: Thank you so much.

So much more could have been asked and said, that goes without saying, but of course the object of this interview was his most recent piece of work (covered on EatTheCorn here and here). What’s more, with this interview and others, we got hints of not just one additional project (the untitled AMC show) but more as well, and non-genre to boot — namely, a potential adaptation of his wife’s Dori Carter interconnected short stories We Are Rich, and a potential revisit to an old idea of his on surfing. It is great to see Carter active again!

Since The X-Files ended in 2002, and apart from 2008’s I Want To Believe and the aborted project Fencewalker, Chris Carter has not been associated with a creative project. But for the last two years, Carter seems determined to return to the little screen. There has been the TV series project Unique, which did not get sold in 2011. And now there are two projects simultaneously: The After and a second, yet untitled, show. See here for that second show.

From Sierra/Engine’s website:

From the creator of the X-Files
Chris Carter’s “THE AFTER”
What happens when the end is now?
13 x one-hour

THE AFTER is not POST-apocalyptic, it is REAL-TIME apocalyptic. It is Chris Carter’s take on what could and would happen at the beginning of the end. Suddenly, on a perfectly normal day, our power goes out. Our cell phones and Internet cease to work. We can’t communicate with our loved ones or watch the news on TV. Very quickly the world goes crazy.

SOMETHING terrible has happened out there… but WHAT IS IT? Is it supernatural? Geological? Biblical? With The X-Files, Chris created a format which many shows follow today, wherein some episodes are “mythology” episodes, following the continuing story arc of the show; while others are self-contained “monster of the week” episodes. We intend to employ a similar format with THE AFTER.

We first got wind of The After in September 2012, when Carter was described as “currently developing a new series for cable“. We got many more details in October 2012, when the series was being sold to buyers (co-financiers, cable TV, new broadcast platforms, international buyers…) in MIPCOM, an annual entertainment market event in Cannes, France. Deadline broke the news:

Independent TV studio, Georgeville Television has teamed up with The X-Files creator Chris Carter to finance a new drama series. Entitled The After, the series will debut at next week’s MIPCOM TV market where it will be shopped by newly formed Sierra/Engine Television.

Written by Carter, The After is a thriller which revolves around a mysterious, unexplained event. In the vein of The X Files, The After incorporates elements of science fiction, suspense, and real-world fear and paranoia. “Chris has woven his mythology magic within a very human, grounded story about the moment when we realize all of our worst fears about the world and its future,” said Georgeville CEO Marc Rosen, who co-founded the company earlier this year with Leon Clarance of Motion Picture Capital, the financing arm of Reliance Entertainment.

In addition to The After, GVTV is also financing a remake of the cult UK sci-fi series Blake’s 7 with feature director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) for Syfy, Hunters, a pandemic thriller drama from Overbrook Entertainment and Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski at ABC as well Sense8, a supernatural series from the Wachowskis (The Matrix) and Straczynski. Sierra/Engine is handling the international distribution for GVTV’s projects, which also include Neil Cross’ midseason NBC pirate drama Crossbones. Carter has been looking at non-traditional TV development/production for his return to television after The X Files. Last year, he teamed with MRC for female-drive thriller Unique, which didn’t get set up at a network. Carter and Georgeville are with CAA.

The Hollywood Reporter also echoed:

This new series follows the aftermath of a mysterious event and will incorporate both supernatural and suspense elements that run through most of Carter’s work.

While at MIPCOM, Georgeville TV CEO Mark Rosen was interviewed by 8 Art City (French media), and he gave many more details in his French-English mix. At that time, the promo image above from Sierra/Engine was already in use. This is a full transcript/translation of what he said:

In fact it’s not apocalyptic, it’s very apocalyptic. In fact it’s the first five seconds when it begins, the five minutes, the five hours, the five days, the five weeks. Normally, films — and even series, like “Revolution”, but films normally — they jump a period of ten years, twenty years, something that is ahead. Because you want special effects, production design, things like that. But with us, it’s really reality, it’s what happens if you and me we are here, something happens outside and we find ourselves in the middle of we don’t know, if it’s aliens, if it’s biblical, if it’s supernatural, à la Chris Carter in the X-Files.

Each week our group of characters will try to find exactly what’s going on. But as it’s Chris Carter we’re going to do twists and turns I think with the mythology. In fact it’s — he’s going to say the same thing — it’s the closest to the X-Files compared to anything else he’s done today. It’s because there’s a secret with what’s going on, supernaturally or otherwise, and characters who are trying to find that out. At the same time they have missions themselves: to find the family of one of them, to find medicine for another, and for that they hold on together throughout the whole series.

We are going to see the voyage between Los Angeles and New York in the first season, and afterwards we have twists and twists that Chris invented. I think that the audience who liked the X-Files will like this show here.

After MIPCOM 2012, in March 2013 the show was also shopped in MIPTV 2013 in Cannes. TV Wise had this to report:

According to a number of potential buyers who heard the pitch for the series, The After is in fact a thriller set in Los Angeles which explores the coming apocalypse. I hear that the drama begins after a strange event strikes the Earth. There is no government statement on this event and it is shrouded in secrecy and will ultimately lead to a far greater cataclysmic event. The series will follow a core group of characters who try to discover just what has happened and why, while also doing what they must to survive. One source described it as a combination of The X-Files and Falling Skies. “It’s a mystery series set right at the end of the world”, one source tells me. I also understand that, as one would expect with a genre show such as this, The After will be largely serialised and utilise season long story arcs.

As reported previously, around the San Diego Comic Con in July 2013, Carter mentioned he was working on cable projects. The following quotes might refer to The After:

On story ideas they never got to do on the X-Files: “I’m actually saving those for something else I’m working on right now”

On what’s next: “I’m working on something new, and with any luck it could be announced soon.”

And: “Right now I’m close to coming back to television but it’s to cable television. The scripts I’ve written for it, you could not do on network television.”

On August 14 2013, Amazon Studios, which is new in producing original content, announced that The After was among the show concepts it was picking up:

Amazon Studios seems to be gearing up for its next batch of scripted pilots, which is expected to feature both comedy and drama projects. The company already has greenlighted drama pilot Bosch, a police procedural based on Michael Connelly‘s novels about Harry Bosch, and Jill Soloway’s comedy pilot Transparent starring Jefferey Tambor. I hear there are several other projects that are zeroing in on a pickup. That includes The After, a drama from Chris Carter and Georgeville TV set at the moment of apocalypse. The X Files creator is set to write and direct. […] In its first-ever pilot orders in April, the company picked up 6 kids and 8 comedy pilots, five of which — 3 kids and 2 comedy — went to series to stream later this year and in early 2014.

It seems Georgeville TV is aiming more at new ways and platforms for entertainment, such as Netflix (the Wachowski’s and JM Straczynski’s Sense8), X-Box (Blake’s 7) or Amazon (The After). Since the success of House of Cards (Netflix, 2013), the trend of non-network, non-cable “TV” producers has been picking up. If you’re interested, you can read an interview with Amazon Studios director Roy Price on this novel approach to original content:

Amazon announced its first five original series in May, which were selected from a pool of 14 pilots. […]

Assuaging the fears of writers and creatives who might be reluctant to place the future development of something they have poured their heart into in the lap of the viewer, Price says the point is seeing what people react to, not using feedback to tweak the narrative or alter a story arc.

“That’s an important distinction, it’s about assessing how successful something is in its current form versus coming up with the answer – we are not proposing crowd-sourcing a show’s creative direction,” he says.

The bigger picture is that Amazon is betting that the audience outreach will, in bucking convention, unearth a gem that regular TV is not set up to find. “If you look at the history of TV, a lot of the game-changing shows came from networks that were new or coming off a bad streak because that made them more open minded” […]

The manner in which Amazon will release the content to those subs is under discussion, but Price is cool on the simultaneous release model pioneered by Prime Instant’s chief rival, Netflix, citing the need to build buzz and also the drawback of waiting for a series to finish production before it launches.

“It’s possible there is a middle-ground hybrid model,” according to Price. “That may be [put out] episode one, or one through three and then release the others as they become available. One may be too few and thirteen may be more than enough.”

Not two weeks later, the order for a pilot for The After was confirmed:

The X Files creator Chris Carter is close to a TV return with his first pilot in more than a decade. I’ve learned that Amazon Studios has moved forward with a pilot order to The After, Carter’s project with Georgeville TV. Carter wrote and is set to direct the thriller, which takes place at the moment of apocalypse. Georgeville TV, founded by Marc Rosen and Reliance’s Motion Picture Capital, first teamed with Carter for The After last fall when the project was taken to MIPCOM by Sierra/Engine TV. The After joins another Amazon drama pilot, recently ordered Bosch, as the company is looking to launch its first hourlong series. Amazon also has Jill Soloway’s comedy pilot Transparent starring Jefferey Tambor, and football comedy The Outlaws, written by Jeremy Garelick and Jon Weinbach and executive produced by Ice Cube, also is gearing up for a pilot shoot.

During August, Carter had this to say to Vulture:

In October 2013, pre-production of the pilot is in full swing, with several announcements of casting — accompanied by short character descriptions! First, Jamie Kennedy as “a professional clown”, Adrian Pasdar, as “an escaped convict who proclaims to be an innocent man who was railroaded”, and Aldis Hodge, as “a successful Beverly Hills businessman”.

Second, Louise Monot , as “Gigi, a woman caught up in the midst of the action”, and Sam Littlefield:, as “the mysterious Dark Shadow”.

The official announcement for the pilot for The After from Amazon only came on October 31 from Deadline, after casting was done:

Written and directed by Emmy-nominee Chris Carter (The X-Files), executive produced by Marc Rosen of Georgeville Television and produced by Gabe Rotter, The After follows eight strangers who are thrown together by mysterious forces and must help each other survive in a violent world that defies explanation. Sharon Lawrence, Jamie Kennedy, Aldis Hodge, Andrew Howard, Arielle Kebbel, Jaina Lee Ortiz, Adrian Pasdar and Louise Monot will star. “I’m very superstitious about talking about what I’m working on before it’s finished, and it’s more fun if it’s kept a mystery! So let me just say that this is a show that explores human frailty, possibility, terror, and the triumph of the human spirit,” said Carter, creator of The After. “I’m so excited to be telling this story with Amazon in this new frontier of television.”

Producer Gabe Rotter has been Carter’s assistant since 2001, throughout season 9 of The X-Files and I Want To Believe. On November 1 he posted the following: “Wrapped this morning after a long, arduous, AWESOME 15 day shoot all over LA. Exhausted, relieved, and super excited.” (information from the X-Files Lexicon‘s Matt)

The announcement above adds 4 more actors to the ensemble cast of 9: Sharon Lawrence, Andrew Howard, Arielle Kebbel, Jaina Lee Ortiz.

And thanks to IMDB we even have character names to go with that:

• Kebbel as Tammy
• Pasdar as Wade
• Hodge as D. Love
• Lawrence as Francis
• Howard as McCormick
• Monot as Gigi Generau
• Ortiz as Marly
• Littlefield as Dark Shadow
• Oddly, Kennedy is not mentioned although he is in Amazon’s announcement: IMDB does not have the info yet, or perhaps his role is uncredited and his character will grow in importance in later episodes?…

Other characters complete the cast: Gangster #1-4, Fireman, Fireman Night, Garciela, Gang Leader.

IMDB also provides some crew — the most important of which might be the director of photography (Nelson Cragg, who has worked on Howard Gordon’s Homeland) and the production designer (Tony Fanning, who has worked as art director in some Spielberg films).

More info on the context of Amazon Studios from Variety:

As with Amazon Studios’ previous pilots, anyone on the Internet will be able to watch the pilots and provide feedback that the company will use to determine which pilots to produce as series. The dramas are scheduled to stream exclusively on Prime Instant Video and Amazon’s LoveFilm in the U.K. in early 2014.

In November, Amazon is expected to premiere its first original series, both half-hour comedies.

“We are very excited to be working with creators like Michael Connelly and Chris Carter, both epic storytellers in their own right,” Roy Price, head of Amazon Studios, said in a statement. “For the first time we are bringing Amazon customers hour-long programming and we can’t wait to hear what they think of these new stories.”

Amazon’s original productions and exclusive content are available to members of Prime, which provides free two-day shipping on select items for $79 per year as well as Prime Instant Video and other perks. The company had nearly 11 million Prime members at the end of the second quarter of 2013, analyst firm Morningstar estimates; Amazon does not disclose figures for Prime but said it added “millions” of new members in the third quarter.

And that’s where The After stands!

The usual process is for a pilot to be shot, which sets the general aesthetic and stroy threads. The studio then evaluates whether it wants to move forward with a half-season or full season episode order — in the case of Amazon and The After, using viewers input from the pilot as well. The pilot for The After was shot in the second half of October 2013, it now has to go through post-production and air in early 2014 (February?).

The show proper starts production and broadcast some time after that. So if all goes well, we will get to see The After sometime in late 2014. Amazon is an online platform, so it doesn’t have to align to the usual schedule for a TV season, i.e. start of broadcast in the fall and end of broadcast in late spring, The After could start any time in the year.

Although it’s way too early to form an opinion, and although the information that has filtered out might be misleading or too partial, from that short synopsis it’s true that The After sounds a lot like another run-of-the-mill big concept show the likes of which there have been many lately — and few of them have survived beyond their first season. For example, The Event (2010, 1 season, supernatural events and conspiracies involving extraterrestrials), FlashForward (2009, 1 season, people unexplainedly have a vision of their lives 6 months in the future), Revolution (2012, 2 seasons and ongoing, post-apocalyptic survival after a world blackout), Falling Skies (2011, 3 seasons and ongoing, post-apocalyptic survival after an alien invasion)… Most of those are broadcast on networks, not cable, and really feel like they were purposefully created to replicate Lost, a show that was both popular and addictive, using elements of Survivor and of the supernatural or science fiction or horror. Lost also used a premise of various unrelated characters who are thrown together and try to survive, like The After. It’s possible that Carter’s ideas are far away from all these concept shows, and we won’t know until more information is released.

Despite all that, it’s exciting to see Carter working on something new — his particular sensibilities that can be seen across all Ten Thirteen productions are unique and would enrich enormously today’s television.