Working title: ALPHABET SOUP. Shooting will take place from 11 May to 11 June. That’s one full month, that’s twice as much that the 1993 pilot got (!) but typical for such a production nowadays. Way too early to put a date on airing, as no additional episodes have been ordered yet. I think it’s impossible for a modern series with 8-10 episodes per season to revive the vibe of a 90s era series, but it is what it is.
Casting call revealed some of the characters names and profiles for the pilot: several Indigenous characters, a biker gang, a missing woman investigation, a young girl. Combined with the Vancouver forest and something supernatural, this sounds just right.
More cast was revealed for the pilot: Amy Madigan, Steve Buscemi, Ben Foster, Devery Jacobs, Lochlyn Munro, Tantoo Cardinal, Joel D. Montgrand and Sofia Grace Clifton. These are some important names, this big production will feel quite different from the little unknown show that came out of nowhere in 1993. Disney is putting good money in this and this bodes well for a full series order. Some of these map well with the characters on the cast call, some not. Quite likely many of these are characters just for the pilot, not recurring characters.
Director of photography Autumn Durald Arkapaw has posted some photos from Vancouver, nothing revealing of course, apart perhaps from a vintage car that could hint at a scene taking place in the 1960s
Back in December, Coogler was writing scripts: “I’m a movie person, and I’m learning to be a television person right now.”
Also, “original series” actors weigh in on the reboot:
David Duchovny: “I’ve spoken to Ryan, and I have a general sense of what it is, but I haven’t read the script.” “There have been talks about certain things, but there’s nothing concrete at this point.” “I wish them luck.” This is very unlike Gillian Anderson who has read the pilot script and heaps praise on Coogler, laying the groundwork for being cast. This reboot sounds like it will be its own thing, and maybe in some future there could be cameos. Which is fine, it needs to stand on its own. (Hollywood Reporter & TV Insider)
Robert Patrick: “I can’t imagine them wanting John Doggett in this reboot. I am excited to see what he does with it and sees where he takes it.” (Comic Book)
James Pickens Jr: “I’d love to see if I could peek in and bring Alvin Kersh back.” (Gold Derby)
I expect some official photo from behind the scenes of the pilot to surface soon, stay tuned!
You heard it here first! “Queens For A Day” is the title of Chris Carter’s next project: a movie he is directing and that he co-wrote with his wife Dori Pierson, and whose shooting already wrapped one month ago!
Director of photography Craig Wrobleski broke the news with an Instagram post dated April 5 2026:
“Just before Christmas of last year, Chris called out of the blue (very Chris) to ask if I would like to shoot a movie he and Dori were putting together called Queens for a Day. Of course I said yes and was sent the most beautiful script filled with heart, humanity, comedy, heartbreak and timeless themes – one that kept revealing itself as you read it and, as we later learned, continued to offer up revelations with every shoot day. […] We just wrapped shooting on the film and it was one of the most unique and extraordinary experiences I’ve ever been a part of.”
Grace Gilroy is in the production team; she was a producer for TXF seasons 10 and 11
Casey Nelson-Zutter is in the production team; she was a location manager for TXF season 10 and a production manager for TXF season 11
from the above, we can say that filming took place in Vancouver, Canada
Nothing is known about what the film is about. The title is a riff on the 1940s American radio and TV game show and related comedy film, “Queen For A Day“, where contestants tell of their hardships and win prizes…
During an interview with the X-Cast recorded on November 23, 2025, Carter had said that he was about to embark on a new directing project. His wife wrote something about 35 years ago, it was optioned but never made. He found the script in their closet. She has updated it. They have found the perfect actress for it, it will excite TXF fans. They were searching for investors for it.
During an interview earlier in 2025, he said that he was writing a movie and that the script would be done by end of June. “It’s going to get made because it’s timely.” “I know where I want to make it, I know who I want to make it with.”
From the looks of it, the project went into production quite quickly, with filming taking place anywhere between December and early April. An Instagram post from Erin Boyes from February 16 could mean that filming only started around that time.
It is quite surprising that this information comes out of the blue, but it’s not unheard of, I hope that more information will start filtering out and we will get something more official.
I am very glad this has happened! Finally, Carter is doing something, his first project in 8 years and his first non-X-Files project in 12 years (since the pilot for “The After”). Now I hope something happens with this, because there is the odd precedent of “Fencewalker”, which was a project of his that was actually shot in 2008 but nothing came out of it. More to come as this develops.
3X20: Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’ aired 30 years ago, on April 12 1996. Written by Darin Morgan, this was quite possibly the most important episode of The X-Files‘ mythology without being one. I know, I know, superlatives are risky. But JCFOS was an episode that could be read on so many levels: an entertaining story in of itself; a synthetic illustration of lots of UFO/conspiracy theories; one possible “solving” of the show’s mythology; a commentary on the show itself. And it did turn out that, if you buy into the whole revival-is-a-retcon theory and colonization was never meant to happen, then remember that JCFOS went there decades before.
I realize now that I never linked to Professor Baylock’s video analysis of the episode from ten years ago: “The Bridge to the Metamodern”. Essential vieweing.
“X-Files has been called the ultimate post-modern television show. JCFOS could be called one of the first examples of post-post-modernism, or metamodernism. X-Files is a show about aliens and conspiracies. JCFOS isn’t like the X-Files, it’s not actually about aliens or conspiracy, JCFOS is about the X-Files itself.”
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?
