The X-Files reboot gets green light with Sinners producer Ryan Coogler at the helm

The long-mooted The X-Files reboot is happening.

The project has been given the green light for a pilot by Hulu (which is part of Disney+ in Australia), and it is likely to be picked up as a full series given the talent involved.

A new version of The X-Files has been a passion project for over three years for filmmaker Ryan Coogler, the man behind Black Panther, Fruitvale Station, Creed and Sinners.

He’s currently on the awards season trail and is nominated for three Oscars for Sinners, with two previous nods under his belt. Yesterday, Coogler won the BAFTA for best original screenplay.

The official logline for the reboot is, “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 phenomenon”.

SAG-nominated actor Danielle Deadwyler has been cast as one of the two leads. Deadwyler is best known for her performances in Till, Carry-On and Station Eleven, plays one of the main characters in the upcoming Steve Carell HBO campus comedy-drama Rooster, and will be a recurring character on the third season of Euphoria.

The second lead has not yet been revealed, but their chemistry with Deadwyler will be crucial. A huge part of the original series’ success was hinged on the dynamic between Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny’s Scully, a sceptic, and Mulder, a believer.

Given that the new project has been described as a reboot rather than a revival or sequel, it will likely exist in a different era to the 1994 series. But Coogler has previously said that he had spoken to Anderson about potentially being involved.

“She’s incredible and fingers crossed there”.

Anderson has also given her approval for a Coogler-helmed reboot. She told British TV program This Morning, “I spoke to him, and what I said was, ‘If anyone were to do it, I think you are the perfect person and best of luck, call me’”.

If Coogler’s The X-Files does exist in a separate narrative universe, it would free him from the onerous and convoluted mythology of the original series.

The X-Files was created by Chris Carter, who will retain an executive producer credit on the new version but is unlikely to be creatively involved, and debuted in 1993.

The original series ran for nine seasons and returned for two revival seasons in 2016 and 2018.

There were also two movies, one which was released between seasons five and six and was plugged directly into the show’s ongoing storylines, and another in 2008, after the series had ended and served as a standalone story, plus two spin-off series, The Lone Gunmen and Millennium.

With the tagline “The Truth is Out There”, The X-Files became famous for its mythology arcs, which furthered the show’s long-running storylines about government conspiracies, alien invasions and cabals of powerful and shadowy figures.

These were punctuated with its “monster of the week” instalments, often disconnected to the overall plot and featured Mulder and Scully investigating strange goings-on, including time dilation around the Bermuda Triangle, psychic persons, a serial killer who can stretch and extend his body, vampires, and someone who appeared to be the luckiest man on Earth.

These standalone episodes were often more popular among the fandom, especially as the mythology arcs became increasingly complicated. Carter even retconned some decisions, including the death of overall villain, “Cigarette Smoking Man”, who returned for the revival series despite being very clearly killed off in the original series.

Even though The X-Files creatively became something with diminishing returns as it went on over the years, it was hugely influential in its halcyon days, and sparked a raft of supernatural investigation shows including Fringe, Supernatural and Warehouse 13.

At one point, its theme song had charted across Europe, the US and Australia. It reached number one in France and number two in the UK.

The show’s peak years had coincided with the increasing take-up and ubiquity of the internet and fans flocked to online message boards and chat rooms. It was one of the earliest examples of pop culture that had an internet discourse. Carter was known to frequent those chat rooms.

The series made instant stars out of Duchovny and Anderson, and also featured a raft of early-career guest stars who would later become famous, including Jack Black, Bryan Cranston, Lucy Liu, Jane Lynch, Aaron Paul, Ryan Reynolds and Octavia Spencer.

Duchovny left the show at the start of season eight but returned for the series finale, the second film and the revival.

Coogler said in April last year of his reboot ambitions, “I’ve been excited about that for a long time, and I’m fired up to get back to it. Some of those episodes, if we do our jobs right, will be really f—king scary. We’re going to try to make something really great, and really be something for the real X-Files, and maybe find some new ones.”