The follow-up to the first volume of The X-Files Official Archives in 2020 has now been postponed many, many times since its original announcement for December 2023.
Now in an interview with The Wrap, author Paul Terry teases the next volume, for March 7, 2027. On the publisher’s site, Abrams Books, now says March 9, 2027. Let’s hope it will happen this time!
“The X-Files: The Official Archives: Volume II: Extraterrestrial Activity and the Syndicate” will cover the show’s mythology — so you can be sure I’m very excited to hold this in my hands! At 360 pages, it’s also 60 pages longer than Volume 1, it’s going to be big!
Note the date on the cover page next to Terry’s name: 7/3/2023, which is probably when he finished making it, already over three years ago (Volume 1 had 3/21/20, and it was published in September 2020).
The interview includes the first look of the interior: looks like the last page on 5X20: The End (the burnt X-Files office) and the first page on Fight the Future (Blackwood county, Texas).
As with Volume 1, there will be a meta-narrative woven into the files. I am guessing it will be again about Agent Leyla Harrison putting together this collection of files, or it could be something else. Terry says: “Mulder and Scully’s investigations into extraterrestrial activity and the Syndicate was often very dangerous. With volume two, I felt it was important to capture the spirit of that. And so, as the reader studies the case files, they will gradually pick up on something else that is going on. Something perilous. It heightens the classified nature of what Agents Mulder and Scully, and others, investigated, in search of the truth.”
It will cover everything from the beginning all the way to the revival, so I’m curious how and if the book will deal with the jump from the original mythology to the revival’s reworked mythology that swept several things under the rug (or contradicted what came before, take your pick).
Of course, rather than any new information on The Truth of it all, the joy of this book will be more the physical object itself, and the replicas of props and images unearthed by Terry at the Fox archives!
Why the accumulated delays? We don’t know. But we can theorize it had something to do with Disney’s takeover of Fox and the subsequent streamlining of their merchandising. Maybe they were keeping such a release handy to go together with the release of the Coogler/Yale project on Hulu/Disney+, in which case this new release date gives us a hint as to when that is coming out.
And so the recycling machine continues on its path. Disney is taking advantage of Ten/Thirteen day to announce that the Coogler/Yale The X-Files project will be more than just the pilot: it is going to series!
Ludwig Göransson confirmed as the composer for the pilot, which is good news!
No other details announced (number of episodes, when it would air). The episodes actually have to be made before any of that comes, unless Disney/Hulu wants to just release the pilot ahead of time first. 2027 would be a good guess.
As reported previously, the two-hour pilot finished shooting in June. Coogler liked it so much he was considering pushing for a feature film release. It was also announced that Coogler was moving to developing series for Netflix, so apparently he would not be further involved with the TXF series; indeed, Coogler’s five-year development deal with Disney started in 2021. Jennifer Yale will be the TXF series showrunner.
Happy 70th birthday for Chris Carter and happy 65th birthday for Fox Mulder…
Edit: this could just be a rumor, but World of Reel, that also said that Coogler’s pilot was a two-hour feature shot on 65mm film, says that both Mulder and Scully appear already in the pilot!
Jeff Charbonneau passed away last week, according to X-Files News. He was the music editor for everything Ten Thirteen produced: The X-Files from the pilot all the way to the revival seasons; Millennium; Harsh Realm; The Lone Gunmen; the two TXF movies; even Carter’s pilot for The After. The Vrach Frankenshteyn director’s cut was the last thing he worked on.
He was one of the foundations of all of Ten Thirteen and one of those figures behind the scenes that didn’t get a spotlight but were important. Our thoughts are with his family.
Jeff worked with the sound effects team and music mixer Larold Rebhun to balance music and sound, creating the shows’ unique atmospheres. A close collaborator of composer Mark Snow, who passed away last year, he edited Mark’s music into the episodes, did some arrangements and occasionally contributed with music himself.
Most memorably, he composed the music in 4X13: Never Again where Scully gets her tattoo (and found on La-La Land’s TXF Volume 4):
Just looking at his Ten Thirteen work, he won two Emmy Awards for sound editing for The X-Files and got nominated three more times, plus once for Millennium.
He also worked onmany other shows, such as 24, Homeland (both with ex-TXF alumni Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, and Larold Rebhun), Love, Death + Robots… not to mention his film work: Dazed and Confused, Seven Years in Tibet…
Jeff had a rich background, well-travelled, studied film and anthropology, a performing musician and an acrobat, and was an accomplished photographer. Jeff Charbonneau and Eliza French collaborated together on peculiar photography projects that I can only describe as surreal gothic fantasy by way of Jean Cocteau and the Quay Brothers. Below is a small selection of their work. Personally, I find them very enchanting and intriguing! See more at their website is Seven Sisters Asleep.
Since the last update in May, here is another update on the new The X-Files project, aka “the reboot” for lack of a better name or descriptor, handled by Ryan Coogler.
Director of Photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw posted another series of photos from her time shooting the pilot in Vancouver (plus one of Coogler for his birthday): again, hard to tell anything on the end product from this, other than it looks like they will be making use of the Vancouver forests (as pictured in this article), which is excellent news.
Some Vancouverites reported that shooting was taking place at the Pendrell Suites at 1419 Pendrell St, which is what had been used for the exterior shots of Scully’s apartment (and gave the name to the character of Agent Pendrell).
The choice of shooting there could be significant: will there be a flashback where Scully makes an appearance? will the investigation involve a past case of Mulder and Scully’s and the new agents look for clues at Scully’s past apartment? On the other hand, it could just be a case of making use of an interesting building and frequent shooting location, unrelated to its past connection to the show.
This Twitter/X account has a behind the scenes photo of Patel and Deadwyler. No source is provided, so treat this with a grain of salt — because nothing else from the production has filtered to the public! If you know the actual source, or know that this is fake, please reach out!
That same account posted a shooting notice and a photo of the shooting for Pendrell Street, although with no source provided it’s hard to be sure this is legitimate.
— The X-Files Reboot (@TheXFilesReboot) June 6, 2026
The photo is taken from Broughton Street looking into Pendrell Street, so the location fits.
Canadagraphs, who had spotted shooting of the season 10 revival, also spotted shooting of the pilot, in this short video: shooting in a manor-like house, covered in sheeting (to make it look like nighttime?). This is not the Pendrell Suites.
Interviews
The Direct Himesh Patel: “I don’t want to say anything that’s going to get me disappeared. Needless to say, myself and Danielle Deadwyler are playing completely new characters, and we just wrapped on the pilot. If we get to do more… we’ll see where we go from there.”
Collider Himesh Patel: “I really can’t tell you much with regards to anything other than it’s just a pilot, for now. We shot a pilot, we’ll see what happens, but I had a great time, and everyone was great to work with, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”
Virgin Radio UK Himesh Patel: “It’s Ryan Coogler who’s rebooting it. He’s an amazing filmmaker. And so again, just so glad to have even been asked. We had a lovely chat about it. I was at home. I got an email. And then I had breakfast with Ryan when he was in town for the BAFTAs and we had a chat about his sort of ideas for it beyond the script that I’d read and the character that we’re trying to build. It was a weird one because I was like, am I auditioning for you or are you trying to pitch this to me? Because obviously for me the answer is yes! And then we went on that journey and I just wrapped on it. It’s just a pilot for now. Hopefully people get to see it eventually. There’s two of us who will be the sort of centerpiece of the show, myself and an actress called Daniel Deadwyler who I worked with before. Completely new characters.”
Happy Sad Confused (at 44min) Himesh Patel: “We shot the pilot. It was very, very special. We await a decision, of course. All I can tell you is I had an incredible time. It was [meaningful for me] maybe not as meaningful as for people who really dived into it or lived it at the time. I was maybe 3 or so when it first started, a little young to be watching it. You really come to understand the responsibility of it, the power of it, as a world.” “Ryan and his whole team and myself and Danielle were very aligned in that way that we love depth, we love everything to have a meaningful context. Ryan believes that the audience is intelligent and he wants to give them as much richness and tapestry as he can. Hopefully, people will see it.”
The Daily Beast Danielle Deadwyler: “allow the change to happen”, “remain open-minded”
The pilot as a movie?
Barely a week after shooting concluded, Coogler and his production company announced a partnership with Netflix, moving away from working with Disney (THR article): “Proximity Media Television signed a multi-year deal to develop series exclusively for Netflix. Proximity’s prior overall TV deal at Disney expired earlier this year.”
Now, it was always the plan that Coogler would develop the concept and direct the pilot only, leaving the showrunning to another person, Jennifer Yale, so Coogler was never meant to be involved full time with a running series. It’s unclear how far ahead Coogler and Yale have planned stories, story arcs and character arcs, but Coogler did talk about multiple scripts in the past. It’s also unclear whether this new deal means that he cannot be involved at all with Disney+ productions.
In this context came the news from World of Reel that the pilot is a full two hours length, that it was shot in 65mm, and that Coogler is asking Disney to consider releasing it as a feature film!
Filming a TV production on film instead of digital is by now extremely rare, even more so on 65mm which is more of a feature film format (the original TXF series was shot on 35mm). Coogler and Arkapaw shot “Sinners” in 65mm as well. It looks like they have given this project the same care as for their larger projects and they want the prestige that goes with it.
We can only speculate what this means for the TV series beyond the pilot. Is Disney not as keen any more and Coogler is pushing for his work on the pilot at least to be seen by the public? Is Disney very keen and confident and want to use this as a way to promote the future series? Is the pilot’s story sufficiently self-contained for an independent release?
As Patel reminded us several times, only a pilot has been shot and a series is not a done deal. Coogler and Arkapaw are Academy Award-winning “hot” names right now, and Patel’s star is rising, as he was in Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey”, one of the highest-grossing films of the year. An X-Files series involving these people will not be a little underground series that will find its audience but a costly prestige release that will have a big marketing push.
An unexpected third X-Files movie would be cool for sure! To be continued…
Director-producer Ralph Hemecker has died aged just 65 (Deadline). Ten Thirteen fans know him from his work on three episodes of Millennium, one for each season (and among the most memorable of the entire series) and one episode of The X-Files season 5 (not the most memorable):
Millennium 1X08: The Well-Worn Lock, one of the boldest and darkest episodes, dealing with child molestation
Millennium 2X06: The Curse of Frank Black, a mostly silent episode and truly an all-time classic
Millennium 3X02: Exegesis, a soft-reboot of the series but with very prescient themes
The X-Files 5X09: Schizogeny, the “killer trees” episode that wasted guest star Sarah Jane Redmond (but, to be clear, any shortcomings from the episode sure are not due to the directing or the acting!)
IMDb page. He was involved in many projects, more recently Once Upon A Time and Blue Bloods.
