Lest we forget: actor Tom Noonan passed away a few weeks ago, on February 14 (The Hollywood Reporter article). The X-Files fans will remember him for his very memorable portrayal in one of the series’ best episodes, as child serial killer and Mulder’s dream tormentor John Lee Roche in Vince Gilligan’s 4X08: Paper Hearts.
Noonan had previously portrayed the serial killer Francis Dollarhyde in Michael Mann’s Mindhunter (1986), the first adaptation of a Thomas Harris novel and certainly an influence on Chris Carter on The X-Files and later on Millennium. Noonan had a very varied career, mixing high-brow with low-brow roles, all memorable: I remember him from Robocop 2, Last Action Hero, Heat, Synecdoche, New York, Anomalisa, and the short They’re Made Out Of Meat… Here’s to one of the great guest roles of the series.
Ryan Coogler, Danielle Deadwyler; (inset) Jennifer Yale
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)
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?
Unfortunately, there has been another big, big death in The X-Files family. Ken Hawryliw, prop master for TXF seasons 1-5, passed away a few days ago.
Kenneth Harvey Hawryliw headed the props team: he designed and realized the props seen on the show. There’s a lot that the props team did: all the files and paperwork handled by Mulder and Scully, all the badges and guns, all the alien implants. In many cases the prop was a star of the episode, with perhaps the most iconic being the alien stiletto, with its simple and elegant design. But there’s a lot more we can mention: the alien fetus from The Erlenmeyer Flask; the sea shell from Fresh Bones; the demon drawings and sculptures from Grotesque; the Martian rock from Tunguska; the alien Rebels’ firewand from Patient X; the doll from Chinga; and many, many others, big or small.
The props department was also responsible for all the documents, newspaper clips, crime scene photos, or photos as part of the set design, all meticulously created to fit in with the item’s use within a scene. The UFO photo from Deep Throat; the DAT tape from Anasazi; the thought photos from Unruhe; young Fox and Samantha’s photo that the CSM had from Redux II; etc, etc.
In the late 90s, the “Unrestricted Access” CD-ROM showcased his work, with photos and videos and detail that was not visible on the few seconds these things are visible on the screen (although retrospectively this was very low-resolution!).
Ken also had a cameo appearance in the show as Byers’ co-worker in Unusual Suspects. He contributed with a script for the show, season 6’s Trevor. And he was also someone full of stories to tell, about his creative process and the behind the scenes adventures that went into making the show. Apart from TXF, he worked on “Battlestar Galactica” and many other shows shot in Vancouver. We covered here some of his long and detailed recent interviews (Conspiracy, TXF docu) and we reposted some behind the scenes photos he published on his social media Sci Fi Props Guy.
Please consider donating to the GoFundMe set up to support his wife and two minor children during this devastating time — his last credited work dates back to 2020, and the page explains Ken’s family’s situation. If you’re unable to donate, please share.
The image above was sent from Ken to Jesse J. Adams who shared it with me.
I also want to take this opportunity to share a piece of work from Ken, along with his assistant Jim Pate. I cannot tell you how elated and nervous I was when I acquired this recently. I have in my possession Scully’s medical file in the Strughold Mine from 3X02: Paper Clip, and this is the screen-used item. It is an excellent example of an expertly created prop fit for purpose. The paperwork, the numbers pointing to an archiving system, the pages design mimicking medical forms with fields to fill in, additional material such as a WHO vaccination card, and of course the biological sample box containing Scully’s DNA sample. An iconic prop for an iconic scene.
A new fan site is around: a showcase of prop replicas and costumes related to #TheXFiles#Millennium, by fellow fan and friend Demijan Omeragic! Among others, the Tulpa statuette from “Arcadia”, the Alien Bounty Hunter stiletto weapon, Krycek’s leather coat from “Patient X”, Frank Black’s iconic coat. More and more fans delve into the details of the making of the show, and two aspects are the props and costumes.
The props replicas is a world in of itself, with fans obsessively trying to get information out of screen captures and auctioned props to make their replicas as screen-accurate as possible. The costumes is another world, where fans either make replicas of their own or try to track down the exact commercial model (from 30+ years ago) that was used by the production. All good stuff, with great personal stories behind each item — I encourage you to look around!
2025 has been a tough year! Writer-producer Ted Mann died earlier this year, in September, aged 72, as reported by Variety.
He was a consulting producer in season 1 of Millennium and wrote 4 episodes: “The Judge“, “Loin Like A Hunting Flame“, “Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions” and the season finale “Paper Dove“.
His credits also include David Milch’s NYPD Blue and Deadwood and Gordon & Gansa’s Homeland. He also did a short cameo in the Morgan & Wong series Space: Above And Beyond!
“The Judge” included the first mention of Legion, before anybody thought it would become an important part of the show’s mythology.
The sequel to Carter’s landmark episode “Lamentation“, “Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions” was no less memorable, with Lucy Butler and attorney Al Pepper tempting Frank Black, and the series’ first appearance of an angel, Sammael.
In related news, the Millennium After The Millennium documentary is getting a re-relase with more footage and bonus material! Find all that here.
Some recent cast reunions in conventions were billed as The X-Files 32th anniversary events, and it’s true such events with so many cast members are by now rare.
This made for some beautiful photos. Robert Patrick says “pure joy“:
Fan Expo
With Gillian Anderson, Robert Patrick, Annabeth Gish, Mitch Pileggi, Nick Lea. Some highlights:
Robert: Doggett is his favorite role of his entire career!
Gillian typically doesn’t remember anything (but does remember the scene where Scully throws water on Doggett’s face), whereas Nick remembers details.
Robert remembers doing script table reads, nobody else does.
Mitch remembers shooting a scene with Duchovny, Carter called and was rewriting the scene, he passed the dialogue over the phone: that’s how a short notice they had with getting and learning the dialogue.
Nick: he had little notice, except the one time he knew he would have to speak Russian 2 weeks in advance [4X09: Tunguska].
Robert: the director of photography would give them directions to direct their flashlights to hit a board, so that the reflection would light their own faces.
Did they have any input to their character to Carter? Everyone, quickly: “no!”
Mitch didn’t like the prosthetics with the nanobots [6X10: S.R. 819], he told them to get rid of this storyline. [And so sadly this was another story thread that was not followed up, I would have liked it to.]
Annabeth watches Stranger Things and Pluribus, which tackle similar questions as TXF.
About 7X17: all things: Gillian wrote the outline one day until 3 am. Carter got Spotnitz to guide her through the process of turning it into a script. The 1st day directing she felt unbelievably lucky, the 2nd day she just wanted it to be over! She hadn’t thought of it beforehand but she wished she had spent more time working with the actors, working through each scene and what specifically she wanted out of them.
+ a panel just with Gillian, where she mentioned that getting back into the Scully character for the revival was really difficult.
Reboot talk
The Ryan Coogler reboot project was touched upon in Fan Expo.
Mitch has not been approached. Gillian had just one conversation with him it feels like 2 years ago, her knee-jerk reaction would be that she’s not interested as she’s done this already, but Coogler is talented and doesn’t say no, she’s interested to read what he’s created.
Gillian repeated just as much for a Screenrant interview: “I have no idea where they are at, or if it’s at.”
So any Scully reappearance talks in the potential reboot are way overblown, this is far from happening yet!
Monster Mania
Another cast reunion, same with the above minus Nick Lea but with William “Bill” Davis and Laurie Holden. Apart from the usual questions (do you believe, what’s your favorite, how did you meet Arlene, did you really eat the 2X20: Humbug cricket) there were two “incidents” I want to flag:
On the William arc, anything else you want to know? Gillian: I guess to find out who the father is. A fan shouts “The Cigarette-Smoking Man”…and Gillian gives Bill a comic look.
Anything you would like your character to do? Bill: I had to offer to write an episode to get some scenes with Gillian. Gillian: But he gave me something else instead. Bill: I didn’t plan that part.
This is both funny and tragic. It’s awkward to say the least that actors have to answer for the writer in front of fans… They will be doing this for the rest of their lives!
Gillian Anderson on “War of the Coprophages”
Gillian confirms on Jimmy Kimmel that the happenings in one shot in 3X12: War of the Coprophages were not planned: as she walks into a supermarket, a car accident happens behind her and an extra bumps into her. She continued in-character, and the shot made it to the final episode. Both these things were great and contributed to the sense of panic that the episode was trying to convey at that point!
David Duchovny on “Aubrey”
A story relayed by Annie on X-Files Diaries: David told her that one particular line in 2X12: Aubrey came from him, and not from script writer Sara Charno. The line in question:
Mulder: “I’ve often felt that dreams are answers to questions we haven’t yet figured out how to ask.”
This memorable line was repeated from Scully back to Mulder in 4X08: Paper Hearts.
Is this true? Let’s do some forensic work. We can compare script versions, thanks to boggsfiles: earlier script versions as late as the pink version (dated Nov 14 1994) don’t have it, while the yellow version (dated Nov 16, just two days later) has it. The dailies from that episode show that Nov 22 or 23 was day 5 of shooting, placing the start of shooting to Nov 18 or 19. So it looks like it checks out and that David could have provided that line after a script read just a couple of days before shooting began!
