Chris Carter (screenwriter) encyclopedia topics

He was born in Bellflower, California to William and Catherine Carter. In college, he majored in journalism, graduating from California State University Long Beach in 1979. His brother, W. Craig Carter, is a Lord Foundation Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT.

Carter began writing for Surfing magazine out of college. For the next five years, he traveled around the world both as a freelance writer and as the magazine's associate editor.

A big break in his career came in 1985, when Jeffrey Katzenberg, then chairman of Walt Disney Studio Entertainment, read a screenplay he wrote and signed him to development with Walt Disney Pictures. While working with Katzenberg, Carter wrote and produced several television movies including pilots of Cameo By Night and The Nanny, an unsold pilot unrelated to the Fran Drescher sitcom. He co-produced the second season of the comedy series Rags to Riches. and in 1989 was creator and executive producer of a comedy series called Brand New Life for Disney's Sunday night lineup.

Ten Thirteen Productions

Upon the creation and production of The X-Files in 1993, Chris Carter started a production company called Ten Thirteen Productions. It is named in honor of Carter's own birthday, which is October 13. Between 1993 and 2008 it produced:

201 episodes of The X-Files
67 episodes of Millennium
9 episodes of Harsh Realm
13 episodes of The Lone Gunmen
The feature film The X-Files: Fight the Future
The feature film The X-Files: I Want to Believe
The feature film Fencewalker

During this time the Ten Thirteen offices were located in Century City, Los Angeles, California, with Frank Spotnitz serving as President, Mary Astadourian serving as Vice President and Jana Fain serving as Office Manager. Spotnitz has gone on to start his own production company, Big Light Productions, with Fain as director of development.