In short, says Frank Spotnitz: It was The Dark Knight's fault. Warners' blockbuster, with all its brooding and scares simply claimed too much of the market on gothic fanboy melancholy for X-Files to compete a week after TDK first hijacked the box office. One one hand, it's not the most outlandish claim; few films escaped the Batman Revolution without at least a flesh wound (even Mamma Mia!, which Spotnitz cites among the season's most resilient counter-programming). Yet on the other, we can't help but feel a little embarrassed for a guy this delusional about his 15-year-old pop-cult franchise:

According to Spotnitz, I Want to Believe should have been a hit, based on its quality and on its genre as a scary movie. "Blockbusters, comedies, horror, scary films, these are always going to have a place in the theatre," Spotnitz tells Sun Media.

"Our theatrical performance this past summer notwithstanding, I think The X-Files is still a natural for theatrical release. We just opened the wrong week. The week after The Dark Knight, I think, was just not the right week for us. [...] We were a little dark scary movie coming in the fumes, in the exhaust, of this mammoth machine that was The Dark Knight. And I don't think we had a chance!"

They also didn't have the late Heath Ledger, IMAX, three years between films (as opposed to 10 years, with the previous X-Files film earning $80 million), virtually unanimous critical praise or a Momzo the Clown scandal. As Spotnitz almost certainly knows, it takes a village to make a hit. Literally — just ask the leaders of Batman, Turkey. Come to think of it, we hear they might be looking for co-plaintiffs against Warner Bros. if you think a class-action suit is worth a shot. Think it over.

• Spotnitz believes Dark Knight to blame [Toronto Sun via MCN]

"Yeah, we played tennis and we were playing partners and friends," she says. "There is no romance, and we are just friends. No love, nothing. That is all I have to say."

Duchovny's lawyer weighed in on the matter to People:

"The stories about an alleged affair between David Duchovny and his tennis instructor, Edit Pakay, are completely false," attorney Larry Stein says..."Ms. Pakay denied the rumors to me in person last Friday, saying they are just friends, and in addition, said in writing that such stories are 'lies and deceit," he says.

Shame on you, America, for assuming that Pakay was attempting to imply an affair with innocent statements like "I don't want to be the third person in the marriage but I know it can be seen that way." Can't a tennis coach sell her story to a British tabloid, provide personal photos of herself and Owen Wilson, and drop incriminating hints about her ex-employer without everyone jumping to conclusions? Now, if you'll excuse her, Ms. Pakay has to go recreate some notorious teacup pictures for Life & Style — by which she means nothing, ravenous media wolves!

• David Duchovny's Tennis Instructor Denies Affair [E!]

• Lawyer: David Duchovny Denies Affair with Tennis Instructor [People]

Speaking last night, Edit admitted: 'We have a very, very close friendship. I don't want to be the third person in the marriage but I know it can be seen that way.

...When asked directly if her relationship with the film and TV star had developed into a full-blown sexual affair, Edit said: 'I don't want to say anything that might hurt David. I am not going to deny it. I don't know what our relationship means to him.'

...Reflecting on her relationship with Duchovny, Edit said: 'I might talk more later.

At the moment I cannot. I have a lot of pride. If I talk about my relationship-with David, people will think I am just some girl who talks to the Press.

'I am not like that. If you want to write that we have an affair then fine. I will not argue against it."

Pakay's attempt to dissuade people from thinking she's "just some girl who talks to the Press," by talking to the Press deserves some convoluted kudos, though at this point, we're not sure what to believe anymore. Did Duchovny menage it up with alien bounty hunters? Did he attempt to replace an increasingly over-it Tea Leoni with Annabeth Gish? At this point, no twist seems too far-fetched (and since we bought the whole "Baby William" thing, that's really saying something).

• 'An affair? I'm not going to deny it': Tennis coach tells of her close friendship with 'sex addict' David Duchovny as he splits from wife [Daily Mail]

He said Tea gave him an ultimatum: "Get treatment or our marriage is over," a source told the tab, which is riding high after getting former presidential candidate John Edwards to admit his tomcattin'.

"At first, Duchovny tried to lie his way out of trouble, but eventually was overwhelmed with guilt and confessed," The Enquirer contends.

US Weekly concurs that Duchovny, 48, "has a history of indiscretions," according to "multiple sources." The mag claims he put the moves on an extra on his Showtime hit, "Californication." "They ended up making out," alleges a source. "She later heard this wasn't the first time he'd taken special interest in an extra."

Since checking in for a 35-day course at the Meadows rehab center in Wickenburg, Ariz., Duchovny has been visited by his supportive wife, who has been forced to scratch promotional appearances for her new comedy, "Ghost Town."

There's no telling how much of Duchovny's five-week sex rehab stint has yet to be completed, but we suppose if he had to dry out somewhere, "Wickenburg, Arizona" sounds as good a place as any. Still, we wonder if this presages a drop in deep background eye candy when Californication returns for its second season. Should sex-addicted novelist Hank Moody find his way to the Playboy Mansion, will the grotto be filled not with Playboy bunnies but with first-round casting rejects from Lifetime's Fat Friends?

• Cheat sheet found in David Duchovny's Sex Files [NY Daily News]

In 1997, the actor denied rumors that he himself was a sex addict.

"I'm single and I had a long-term girlfriend up until last November," Duchovny told Playgirl magazine. "I have been seen with more than one woman in the last few months, so I'm an easy target for those kind of things."

He continued "I'm not a sex addict. I have never been to those meetings. It's hurtful to my family and if I was involved with a woman in a monogamous relationship, it would be hurtful to her. There was another story claiming I was a neat freak. If I had to choose one of the two, I think I'd rather be a sex addict."

It appears Duchovny chose unwisely, though he'll certainly be raking in awkward, free promotion when Californication returns for its upcoming second season. While we're sure the actor regrets the damage done to his family (as well as that suddenly damaging, soul-baring interview to Playgirl — but they were so friendly!), we can't say we're that surprised. After all, this is the man who sullied the polite tradition of tea time forever by posing with a cup covering areas that only Dana Scully is meant to investigate. If the truth is out there, we really shoulda seen this coming.

• David Duchovny Enters Rehab for Sex Addiction [Us]

• Previously: The Top 10 TV Characters Men Want To Be Like And Women Want To Be With [Defamer]

Scoring: There's no such thing as partying too hard; therefore, you haven't been. High five! Here's your box office numbers, brah:

1. The Dark Knight - $75.63 million
Have we grown tired of The Dark Knight yet? While MomzoGate gave off the faint whiff of shark-jumping, audience interest in Christopher Nolan's epochal tale of good vs. unwashed hair showed no signs of waning. Its total grosses for Warner Bros. now hover somewhere around an astounding $312 million—and that doesn't even include additional revenues derived from cross-promotions like The Dark Whopper, Australian Burger King's broodiest batburger yet! (Apparently they also flip a coin to see if you'll either get a free order of onion rings, or watch your first born son get his head shot off. Those Aussies aren't fucking around with their Dark Knight tie-ins.)

2. Step Brothers - $30 million
The simple comedy arithmetic of double the imbecilic man-children = double the fun seems to have played itself out nicely for Sony's Step Brothers, as this heartwarming A Very Special Brady story took in a robust 30 mil, with four-out-of-five moviegoers rating it as "funnier the first time, when it was called Dumb and Dumber."

3. Mamma Mia! - $17.865 million
In a strange and beautiful accident of nature, a variety of aquatic mammals—small whales, manatees, and the like—have beached themselves outside the doors of theaters screening this ebullient ABBA-musical, drawn to the siren song of Pierce Brosnan's otherworldly vocal stylings. Fear not: They've been relocated to The Grove's dancing waters, where they seem to be perfectly happy surviving off any Cheesecake Factory leftovers tossed to them by visitors.

4. The X-Files: I Want to Believe - $10.2 million
Sadly, not every beloved franchise to return to the big screen after an extended absence was greeted with the enthusiasm of a Sex and the City, as the tepidly reviewed The X-Files: You Had Me Until The Anal-Probe Business failed to attract much more than the most ardent Scullyite fundamentalists.

5. Journey to the Center of the Earth - $9.415 million
At virtually any screening of this 3-D sci-fi spectacular, you'll see a crowd of delighted children in plastic glasses waving their hands out in front of their faces, attempting unsuccessfully to get a feel of Brendan Fraser's amazingly lifelike self-respect. It's like it's actually there!

• WEEKEND BOX OFFICE July 25–27, 2008 [Box Office Mojo]

Alas, there they were: David Duchovny, X-Files creator/director Chris Carter, writer/producer Frank Spotnitz and cascades of withering shrieks inside the Majestic Crest. Oh, and two lightly spoilerrific clips — a couple minutes each, the longest sustained orgasm most of the attendees have had since the show went off the air.

And by lightly, we mean lightly: A guy gets it in the face and hand with a trowel, winds up in the snow. Crazy psychic Billy Connelly finds him buried. Enter special agents Mulder and Scully. Brooding follows — lots of it. And that's... all? See you in five weeks!

The rest of the night was pure subterfuge, unless you count Carter's faux-reluctant disclosure of a research trip to, ahem, Cleveland. He would barely talk about his means of secret-keeping, allowing only that his and Spotnitz's paranoia was such that ahead of shooting, department heads were allowed script reads only in a sealed room with a camera trained on them and no notes allowed. Duchovny said he had to beg for a screenplay of his own — a bit of a regression from the first film 10 years ago, when the red, Xerox-proof script pages simply made it hard to read his lines.

Once he got the script, Duchovny was still in the dark as to where Mulder had been since the TV show's run — which was fine by him. "When you look back at when Gillian [Anderson] and I first played the characters in 1993, the idea of trying to be that guy in reruns right now — as much as I'd love to — would be a little embarrassing," he said. "That's probably one of the most interesting things for an actor to try: to embody the same character as time goes by. Not wanting to be a cartoon character frozen in time, but a character who changes in time."

Like... how? "No," Duchovny said, shutting the door on yet another plot thread. "It's one of the reasons I wanted to continue playing this character; I wanted to take him on this journey he started in 1993. ... He's frustrated. He hasn't changed. He's a quester; he's always going to be looking."

To that end, Spotnitz plucked a few hundred gushing audience heartstrings by confessing how much he missed his characters. Duchovny one-upped him, recalling Carter's teariness the day of the first read-through ("Awwww!" again, right on cue) and citing a fan video screened on set north of Vancouver. "I just remember thinking, 'Oh fuck, I've gotta deliver,' " he said.

One fan asked when 20th Century Fox would be delivering on its own end — trailers? Teasers? Commercials? Anything? Indeed, awareness beyond fans isn't especially high, as Spotnitz inferred with Fox brass sitting right in the front row. "We had a big marketing meeting with the studio and they assured us that by July 25 everyone will know about this movie," he said. And in the event they take to it, it's set up for a third edition in the next two to three years.