A recent interview with the writers of The X-Files season 11 episode 11X07: Rm9sbG93ZXJz aka “Followers”: Kristen Cloke-Morgan and Shannon Hamblin, from the “Hey That’s Me” podcast. There’s quite a bit of repetition compared to an interview with Cloke from two years ago for The X-Files Diaries. Here are the highlights:
Most importantly:
Glen offered them to write the episode. During s11 there was a concern that there were not enough female writers, they decided to turn over some episodes to other writers. [Just in case there was any doubt left: Gillian Anderson’s public comments had a positive, immediate and concrete impact on the making of the show: had she not made these comments, this would have been a purely Glen Morgan episode, and I suppose 11X09: Nothing Lasts Forever would have been a Wong-only episode. Gillian’s comments were made in June 2017, the female writers were announced in August, the original script draft (white production) is dated 17 October and there were script revisions to 5 November.]
Also:
Shannon was a fan of TXF. She met Glen Morgan because a science fiction script she wrote got to him. [Looks like this was not produced — her IMDb page is quite empty.] She was a writers assistant during TXF s11.
Glen guided them throughout with story notes and corrections.
Darin Morgan looked at their story cards; he was the one that suggested the blob fish.
Glen wanted 4 things: the Tay tweets, drones, AI, no dialogue.
Kristen: there’s too much dialogue, David’s funny and they kept his improvised lines, but they could have been more disciplined. [I agree! It would have been great if there was absolutely no dialogue until the very last scene.]
Praise for production designer Mark Freeborn [TXF s10-11, IWTB, MM s1-2-3]. They both loved the sushi restaurant. It was a store of some kind before becoming that set.
Kristen did the voice of Wendy (at Scully’s house).
They were both on set for the whole shoot for about 3 weeks (except for Kristen for the final scene at the cafe). It was really freezing and raining a lot. It was shot around end of October-beginning of November. It’s rare that writers get invited on set, especially if it’s out of town, but this happened with TXF.
Mulder’s house exterior was shot on location; the interior was a rebuilt set at a studio. Scully’s house was a real house.
There were about 8 drones on set, they were replicated with CGI.
They storyboarded everything. Despite no dialogue, the script was about the typical length.
Gillian didn’t know the “Treat Your Children” song, and Shannon did a karaoke version in front of the whole crew during the shoot, the crew joined in the singing.
The end scenes were shot at a plastic bottle making factory.
“This Man” appearing in every episode: this was a joke between Glen and Kristen’s daughter Greer. [As could be expected — no “alternate universe” theories were mentioned.]
Above Scully’s head there’s a drawing made by Kristen’s young son. [Unclear where this is: at the final drone scene, or at the final cafe scene. It’s not the robot Nighthawks.]
And also this unexpected bit of information:
Kristen originally auditioned for Scully. [This is the first time I hear of this! Imagine what could have been. Kristen as Scully, Gillian as Lara Means. Sacrilege: it could have worked!]
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.”
As time passes, we are cruising through the 30th anniversary of The X-Files season 3. 3X17: Pusher first aired on February 23 1996 and it was only the first episode written by Vince Gilligan as a staff writer, after he was recruited with the freelance 2X23: Soft Light. Pusher remains not only one of Gilligan’s best episodes, but one of the most memorable episodes of the show’s history. Gilligan was recently interviewed on Polygon: read him talk about how he thought he would get fired, how television is a collaborative medium, his appreciation of Robert Wisden and Rob Bowman, and more. Some highlights:
Thirty years later, it’d be called “Influencer” instead of “Pusher.”
After the episode aired, I was so proud of it. I did indeed — in the office on Monday morning, I’m pretty sure I said to Chris, “That’s the best I can do for you. That’s as good as it gets.” And I’ll never forget his reaction. He looked at me very seriously, and he said very quietly, “You shouldn’t say stuff like that, and I very much hope that’s not true, because this job, for all of us, is about getting better with every script.”
Robert Patrick Modell. The middle name, by the way, is named for my brother Patrick. I don’t know where Modell came from. I think I just liked the sound of it. I always felt like a bad guy has got to have three names, like Lee Harvey Oswald.
I remember the truck gag, with the shot of the truck hitting the camera. I said to him, “How are you going to get this? Because you want it to be really badass.” He says, “I’ve got a way.” They bought a mirror and put it on a wooden frame and they put it in the middle of the road, 45 degrees to the camera and to the truck — the truck and the camera were at 90 degrees from each other. The stunt driver blasted this big semi-truck right into the mirror and just drove right through it, smashed the shit out of it. The camera was 30 feet away, safe off on the side of the road.
[On similarities between Modell and Walter White] I guess there are similarities. I am kind of the last one to figure these things out. They usually have to be told to me.
Megacon (Orlando, 20 March 2026): The X-Files cast reunion with Nick Lea, Robert Patrick, Gillian Anderson, Mitch Pileggi, Annabeth Gish.
See and hear actors struggle to remember anything from a 30+ years old show!
Robert wishes he could still play Doggett, if they paid him for it. Best role of his career. His first scene with Gillian was perfect, with the water on his face, it reflected a lot of the fan reception he sadly felt.
Gillian avoided TXF questions and conventions until about 5 years ago when she understood the Scully effect was still a thing today, and reconciled with it. [She mentions the Gina Davis documentary, sorry Gillian but that was… 10 years ago!]
Mitch singles out the moment when Skinner told the CSM “get out” of his office (that’s early, 2X01: Little Green Men), that’s when he knew Skinner would come to be an ally of Mulder and Scully.
Annabeth wishes they had had more time to develop the Doggett Reyes (or Scully Reyes) romance.
Annabeth’s husband-to-be was Robert’s and Chris Carter’s krav maga instructor. Robert remembers introducing them, Annabeth remembers differently.
Props they have kept: Nick: prosthetic arm prop (from Requiem); Mitch: brass bulldog from Skinner’s desk; Gillian: Scully’s grave stone (from One Breath); Robert: all the scripts he was in; Annabeth: bell rings from Reyes’s apartment; all of them have wardrobe.
Early on, Gillian was keen to show her range as a young actor, Chris was training her to show the kind of emotions that Scully would have, faith, science, cool.
Nick singles out Kim Manners, Rob Bowman, and especially Bob Goodwin for the success of the show. He said yes to anything, they just went out and did it, “like in the old days”. He remembers shooting the car explosion (Paper Clip), surrounded by explosives inside the car, it only worked on second take. He insisted doing the stunt hanging out over Skinner’s balcony instead of shooting around him standing on a platform (Tunguska). For Genderbender, he had just met Bowman, and he kept suggesting things for the shots, ” wouldn’t it be cool if”, “yeah!”.
Mitch and Steven Williams choreographed their elevator fight scene themselves (End Game). First take, Bowman wanted more, second take they damaged the elevator set!
Robert remembers learning to scuba dive to shoot in a water tank at Universal (Nothing Important Happened Today).
Nick explains the Black Oil perfectly! Nobody remembers anything!
Awesomecon (Washington DC, 15 March 2026): Gillian Anderson
Reboot: “We [GA and Ryan Coogler] we’ve had a few conversations. He’s such a cool guy and so talented. The pilot script is really good. I would say, have an open mind and give it a chance because it’s going to be fucking cool. It really is. It’s something different. It’s different and it’s special. So, give it a break.”
Where would you like to see Agent Scully go? “That’s got nothing to do with me. Who says that Agent Scully is even in the reboot?”
Influence of Jodie Foster in the Silence of the Lambs on Scully? “Chris had said to me that he had Clarice in mind when he was writing Scully.” “Even though I had seen it however many years before, I had decidedly not watched it because I didn’t want to be Jodie Foster being Scully. But I definitely feel like the grit and determination and single-minded seriousness of Scully and the nature of her intelligence too probably, was very much in line with how Jodie played Clarice, or how Clarice might have been written.”
Gillian having read Coogler’s pilot script is telling: the script would not have circulated to an actor unless Disney/Coogler want to convince her to participate. It looks like the new series would start without Scully (or Mulder), build up its own identity, then leave the door open for an appearance by Scully a few episodes in. But nothing is decided. “Give it a break” definitely sounds like she’s trying to anticipate a negative reaction (that inevitably comes with anything in fandom these days) and pre-empt it.
Megacon (Orlando, 21 March 2026): Gillian Anderson
Casting for Scully: knew it was special just by reading the script for the pilot. Other candidates included Jill Hennessy, Cynthia Nixon. 10 Mulders, 5 Scullys, casting over two days. She was cast at the end of the second day, a Thursday. The next day, Friday, she left for Vancouver to shoot the pilot! Cast just as she got her last unemployment cheque.
About the reboot: more or less repeats the above. “I read the script. It was really good. [I told fans] to not think disparagingly about it. It’s very different and very similar, all at the same time, and it’s very special. I think he’s [Coogler] incredibly talented and I think he’s one of the only people who’d really be able to do something unique and do it justice. He’s completely obsessed with the series. I think he’s one of the most talented filmmakers who’s out there, so the fact that Chris has him as the person who’s going to be involved in the franchise is awesome and a huge gift. I think that you guys will see what he has in mind and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”
Question about the upclong LEGO set: it will include several of the iconic imagery of the series. [Presumably it will be Brent Waller’s original design?]
“Very different and very similar” is exactly what I would want from a new X-Files project.
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?
