It’s official! After initially teased by Chris Carter in March 2023 — essentially 3 years ago! — and being confirmed by Ryan Coogler in April 2025, and 10 years after season 10, we now have an official confirmation that a new The X-Files project is underway. (Article at Variety, Deadline)
For years it looked like this reboot project by Ryan Coogler was stuck in development hell, and then something would happen and the project would seem much closer to fruition than previously thought, then the whole process would repeat. We speculated whether this would be a hard reboot or a continuation in the same universe, if there would be an actual season order and of how many episodes, if the focus would be again on two leads or on an ensemble cast. Now we know more.
The pitch:
“Two highly decorated but vastly different FBI agents form an unlikely bond when they are assigned to a long-shuttered division devoted to cases involving unexplained phenomena.”
So this is an in-universe continuation, with new characters working on the X-Files division, allowing for old faces to potentially show up, but distanced enough so that it can build its own identity. It could be the exact same pitch as for the original series, with perhaps the difference of “highly decorated”: Mulder and especially Scully were quite young and early in their career at the start of the series. We can call it a “spin-off” instead of a reboot, especially since Carter has said that he has hopes for a Mulder-Scully continuation.
Disney wants to feed its intellectual property and present the series to a new generation: there is no ending for any type of product that has some success, no rest, no eternal slumber. All of these are very mercantile motivations, and I hope that this project will be able to stand on its own artistic and storytelling merits.
The team:
- Cast: Danielle Deadwyler (this is such a cool name they could just name the character like that!); male lead not cast yet
- Director: Ryan Coogler
- Writer: Ryan Coogler (as part of his contract to develop new series for Disney)
- Showrunner: Jennifer Yale (not Coogler: as a very high profile Oscar-nominated director, Coogler would develop the concept and hand the reins to somebody else, and go on to do feature films like “Black Panther 3” that has already been announced as his next project)
- Executive Producers: Coogler, Yale, Sev Ohanian, Zinzi Coogler (Ryan’s wife and production partner), Chris Carter (probably only because he created the original show, not involved otherwise as per what he has said in interviews), Simone Harris (co-executive producer) — that’s a lot of producers and never a good sign
- Casting: Francine Maisler (“Sinners”)
- Director of photography: Autumn Durald Arkapaw (“Sinners”)
- Music: I’d love to know, maybe Coogler’s associate and friend Ludwig Göransson (“Sinners”, also Star Wars and Christopher Nolan projects) but Mark Snow is irreplaceable
Timeline up until today:
- March 2023: first teasing by Chris Carter that Fox is working on something.
- April 2024: Carter, Anderson and Dean Haglund keep getting asked about it.
- April 2025: Ryan Coogler confirms this is his next project: “if we do our jobs right, will be really fucking scary”
- October 2025: first casting rumors: “Danielle Deadwyler would play one of the lead investigators whose character is partnered with a male investigator in the new series.” “Coogler is attached to write the pilot, executive produce, and potentially direct the new take on “The X-Files”.” Deadwyler is in her forties, quite older than both Anderson and Duchovny at the start of The Original Series. (Dark Horizons article)
- October 2025: Production Weekly mentions “The X-Files” in production, just during one week.
- October 2025: Coogler says he used to watch the show with his mom: “Like my relationship with ‘Rocky’ with my dad, ‘The X-Files’ is one of those things with my mom. My mom means the world to me — she’s actually here tonight — so this is a big one for me. I want to do right by her and the fans. My mom has read some of the stuff I wrote for it. She’s fired up.” (Variety article)
- November 2025: cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw mentions she’s working on it. (Indiewire article)
- December 2025: Coogler confirms the series will consist of both mythology/conspiracy and stand-alone/monster-of-the-week episodes: “it wouldn’t be X-Files if we didn’t do both” “[TXF] is one of the most beautiful American television shows ever made. Chris Carter was trying to make ‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’. It’s like when you, as an artist, are trying to capture something that you were influenced by, and you make something totally new.” (Happy Sad Confused podcast; relevant clip)
- January 2026: Coogler is intensively writing, and he mentions he discussed with Vince Gilligan to get advice on how to write for it: “Vince gave me a couple hours of advice over Zoom and answered all the questions I had — I’ve got them all in my notebook, and I go back to it often.” (odd that he’s a fan of the show but only discovered that Gilligan worked on it 2013) (The Hollywood Reporter article)
- February 2026: casting director Francine Maisler mentions she’s working on it. (The Hollywood Reporter article)
What’s next?
This is an order for a pilot for Hulu (which, in the USA, is a Fox/Disney streaming channel; I guess internationally it would air on Disney+). Not a full series order. What to make of this? Is Disney not fully convinced about this and still wants a proof of concept before greenlighting (or not!) the production of more episodes? Maybe. In the 1990s series used to do pilots first, but more recently and with long production times full season orders have become more common. There could be a reversal of trend: Hulu is proceeding in a similar fashion for its new “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” (Deadline article). This allows to shoot a pilot, assess what worked and what didn’t, adjust, do reshoots, validate, and then proceed to series. This is what had happened famously with “Game of Thrones”. This also means that this will take time.
When could this be released? This has been in development for a while, so the pilot could be produced quite soon over the next few months. But then there’s the rest of the episodes. Series productions have been getting longer and longer. It could be within 2026 at best (if we go by the time it took to develop Jordan Peele’s “Twilight Zone” in 2019), but more likely not before mid-2027 if compared to development time of some recent projects (such as the recent “Alien: Earth”). Hulu will not just air the pilot, and will most likely wait for all episodes to be shot and go through post-production before deciding on an air date, so all of that adds time.
How many episodes could we expect, if and when this goes to full series order? Certainly not 20-25 like in the 90s. Other Hulu shows like “Alien: Earth”, “Shogun” and “The Bear” are all around the industry standard of 8-10 episodes, and I think this is what we should expect. And then if all goes well we wait more than one year for a season 2, most likely two years (as is the case with Vince Gilligan’s “Pluribus”, for example, Deadline article).
All in all, this is a project with some real talent involved and some people who do have a personal touch and are not just studio hands for hire, so this bodes well. However, there’s a “however”. It will be very challenging to make something original and something that justifies “The X-Files” brand as opposed to making a new series with a similar premise. It will be challenging to remain creative when there is so much scrutiny and things are discussed to death (there were dozens of articles just to say that Coogler had a conversation with such or such, can you imagine this happening over every single of his actions?). It will be challenging to tell a story about government conspiracies with a similar vibe to the original, when the USA is so obviously degrading towards authoritarianism in the real world. It will be challenging to maintain interest for this over a long enough time when there is So Much Content out there, and when years go by between seasons. And it will be challenging to not have the public reception of this completely destroy it, be it due to gatekeeping, to instrumentalized racism, to the overall dismal level of discourse in social media, or to plain legitimate quality concerns.
Mark me curious but also burnt by the Hollywood system’s desire to keep eating itself.
PS: happy 62nd birthday, Dana Scully! Was yesterday’s announcement timed to that?
Tags: ryan coogler, thexfiles, txfreboot
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