Ten years after the first film, and six years after the series run ended, Scully and Mulder are returning to the big screen. Good news; I missed them, and they're no longer encumbered by that black ice/black oil conspiracy plotline I could never make head nor tail of.

Highlights from the Variety article...

"The long-awaited second "X-Files" film is finally a go, with 20th Century Fox setting a July 25, 2008 release date.

Untitled project reunites "X-Files" creator Chris Carter will thesps David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, who will reprise their signature roles as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.

Carter begins lensing in December in Vancouver from a script he co-wrote with Frank Spotnitz, a veteran scribe of the long-running "X-Files" television series, which became a worldwide hit during its 1993-2002 run on the Fox network. Spotnitz also co-wrote with Carter the screenplay for 1998 feature "X-Files." Carter and Spotnitz will also serve as producers.

Studio is keeping the film's logline under wraps, but stressed the pic is a stand-alone story and supernatural thriller that takes the complicated relationship between Mulder and Scully in new directions.

Plan to bring the "X-Files" sequel to the bigscreen was waylaid when Chris Carter brought a 2005 lawsuit against Fox over how the "X-Files" syndication profits were divvied up. Suit was later settled.

Earlier this year, the issue seemed to have been resolved, with Duchovny and Anderson both indicating that the film was finally moving forward.

Released in 1998, feature film "The X-Files" grossed $187 million worldwide, including a domestic haul of $83.9 million and an international cume of more than $103 million."

Pass.

Heeey, come on. The stand alone eps were often the most fun. 'Small Potatoes', 'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose', 'Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"', etc...

If this movie is anywhere near as good as any of those...good times.

Exactly.

Sure, THE X-FILES became a real hit/miss affair in the later years, but many of the early seasons had some kick-ass episodes and was my favorite show on TV for many years.

But, the next film IS coming many years later, after the X-FILES phenomenon has pretty much ended.

The first feature film was fun for me and it might be kinda cool to see all these folks again in some paranormal/alien situations.

SPOILERS BELOW:












If memory serves me correctly, at the end of the TV series, didn't they pretty much say that the entire earth was going to be invaded in 6 years or something?... and there was NOTHING Scully and Mulder could do to stop it? I seem to recall it ended on a rather unhappy note with Scully and Mulder embracing on a bed, sort of showing them helpless... unable to think about what was to come of our world.

Kinda bleak... I think it would be cooler if the movie was to expand on this plot.

I don't think there's still an audience for an X-FILES feature, particularly one opening in July (I predict it opens at #4). However, I'm glad Fox is finally making this, and I'll certainly go to see it.

The conspiracy episodes were annoying as hell, and I bet if you took the time to watch them all in order, the plot holes would be insurmountable. But the standalone episodes were great, especially those written by Darin Morgan and Vince Gilligan. Darin Morgan seemed to fall off the face of the earth for a while, but I saw his name recently in the credits for something, I can't remember what. IMDb says he's a consulting producer on THE BIONIC WOMAN, but I don't think that was it.

SUPERNATURAL has a certain X-FILES vibe. Not just the obvious similarities in concept, the banter between the Winchester brothers is not unlike the banter between Scully and Mulder. That was always the thing that kept me watching THE X-FILES, and the reason I stopped watching when Duchovny left. They never established that kind of rapport with Robert Patrick, an actor I quite like, but he was always sort of a third wheel on THE X-FILES. Then they brought in Annabeth Gish, another actor I quite like, but she made Scully the third wheel. They didn't seem to know what the hell they were doing those last couple of seasons.

Darin Morgan tends to float around wherever his brother Glen happens to be, including BIONIC WOMAN and NIGHT STALKER. I suspect his "consulting producer" credit is strictly a way to get paid for doing nothing. He probably has scripts mailed to him at home, where he reads them over, makes a couple of notes, and sends them back. Certainly nothing that NIGHT STALKER or BIONIC WOMAN has yet done (that I have seen, at least) shows anywhere near the ingenuity and wit of a Darin Morgan teleplay. Actually, nothing on network television has the ingenuity and wit of a Darin Morgan teleplay. I once read a piece about him that said he was basically too lazy to write, which is why his tremendously brilliant writing output is limited to, what, about six scripts?

I like SUPERNATURAL quite a bit, and there's no question that it's basically THE X-FILES 2. In fact, it's better than X-FILES was the last few years it was on. And considering the number of X-FILES alumni that work on it, that's not surprising. Now, if only they could recruit Darin Morgan to write a couple of episodes...

Big deal...

X-FILES pretty much screwed itself in its last few seasons, and lost a lot of goodwill. And if you remember the first film wasn't all that great, being mired in The Conspiracy - and who wrote that film? Carter and Spotnitz...

Maybe if the film was written by The Wongs or Darin Morgan, it'd be worth going to see. A second X-FILES film at this point has the stink of career desperation.

Now, a MILLENNIUM film with Lance Hendricksen... that'd be worth getting excited about.

SPOILERS! kind of.




No one wants a mytharc movie? Cripes. If I had my druthers, it'd be mytharc or no deal. It's all laid out, a big human resistance and alien invasion story. This is probably the last, best shot at an X-FILES movie, right? Nobody remained interested in the core narrative to want to see it paid off?

However. The invasion doesn't begin until December 22, 2012. So I guess logically there's time to fool around chasing individual monsters... except... that Mulder and Scully don't work for the FBI and there are no more "X-Files" proper?

Man, nobody could lose track of every event and stated fact in a story faster than Chris Carter.

I bet the "powers that be" probably felt the same way re: STAR TREK in the late 1970s/early 1980s, as well...

Vincent

Gee, sounds a heck of a lot like the reaction to the first STAR TREK movie, and we know what a disaster that was...

Vincent

I enjoyed the series but wouldn't consider myself a hardcore fan, and I remember seeing the first movie in the theater more than the movie itself (if that makes any sense)...

... but I'm looking forward to the second shot at establishing a franchise. Hell, sounds more interesting than what I expect will be playing on the other screens at the same time.

Maybe they can get Frank Black involved in this one, also.

That aside, I don't see why the time frame matters all that much. The X-Files was a cultural touchstone for a lot of folks, and there's probably a lot of mileage to be gleaned from the nostalgia factor... if touching on something that peaked less than a decade ago can be considered nostalgia.

Exactly. It's too soon for nostalgia and too late to catch any buzz from the series, which has been off the air for six years. I find the timing puzzling. I guess this is the first time they were able to get all the interested parties together after all the lawsuits were settled.

I watched the show religiously for seven years so I'll be there next July, and as you said, it will probably be the most interesting thing on the screens at that time. But I do wonder whether it will survive the crowded summer blockbuster season. Maybe it will pick up a big following on DVD. The cancelled FIREFLY did so well on DVD, Fox greenlit a movie of that. X-FILES had a nine year run. I can see the franchise potential, it's just the timing that seems screwy.

X-FILES may have been popular, but it ain't no STAR TREK...

And the movie isn't going to redeem FILES, especially if they attempt to continue the mytharc... unless there's an unproduced Nigel Kneale screenplay that they can pinch more ideas from.

What screens are we talking about? All screens or just your local multiplex screens? I'll bet you money that I can find ten movies more interesting than X-FILES 2: GALACTIC BOOGALOO any time it cares to open.

There's a great new blog devoted entirely to the use of superfluous quotation marks.

I meant the screens of a multiplex... there's some of us that don't have a repertory theater within realistic driving distance.

Where I'm at, Cinemark moved into town with fourteen screens and promptly killed every other screen in town (two downtown bijous, a three-plex and a ten-plex).

These days, we get what they like and they like to play it safe.

That sounds a lot like what happened in my town. Would it be fair to call Cinemark the Wal-Mart of movie theater chains?

BTW, I love the "Unnecessary" quotation marks blog Richard linked to.

THE X-FILES was the last tv-show I watched regularly and I watched it from season 1 all the way through season 9. I thought it was great for the first 5 years. but those last several seasons (6-9) really started to grate on my nerves. The mythology got so retarded and convoluted, and you could tell they were just writing it as it went along with no idea of what it all would mean. It just became infuriating and dumb, but I forced myself to stick with it to the bitter end. Watching the last few seasons pretty much scarred my entire memory of the early years of the series, though. I haven't rewatched an episode or a rerun since it originally went off the air as I just don't care about any of it anymore.

That said, I will probably still check out the new film next summer and see if they can bring some life back into this dead horse. I think a stand-alone non-myth-arc film was the right choice as the first film was pretty unmemorable in its continuation of the bloated conspiracy drama.

By the way, I just perused the 40 top films in the current boxoffice chart this week and there's not one film in the top 40 that I would go see (although I've already seen "Across the Universe"). So it is quite likely during the summer months when all the craptacular superhero and spfx movies come out that something like XF 2 could be better than everything playing at the commercial multiplex. That's not really a compliment to XF 2 - just a general slam at the state of commercial Hollywood entertainment, especially in the summer.

How about a plot involving the creation of a chemical agent that can make Anderson and Duchovny look like they give a s**t instantly upon contact?

And as someone who lost track of the show over the final years, could someone tell me how Carter dealt with the T-1000 and Scully 2.0? Were the placeholder agents even mentioned in the first movie? Were they killed off in the series?

SPOILERS.



Doggett and Reyes survive X-FILES season 9, and presumably remain employed as regular, non-X-file investigating FBI agents. They're handled as: fairly compelling personalities with utterly botched character arcs. The new agents - and Scully - do some low-key shuffling of how much they do or do not "believe" in ghosts and ghouls and Martians, but for the most part Nothing Important happens to them. Their personal involvement in the stories isn't crucial to the mytharc. Mr Carter seemed fixated on who Believes and who doesn't... but when there are real, verifiable monsters and aliens, does it even matter?

Doggett and Reyes don't figure into FIGHT THE FUTURE, but the real placeholders are Agents Spender and Fowley, popping up just before FIGHT THE FUTURE and probably being groomed as characters to take over the show as early as season 6.

Oh, man, I had forgotten all about those characters. I didn't know what Carter was getting at when introducing them, but Bruce the Shark was way in the rearview window by the time they came along. I was a big fan, but few shows have ever gotten the creative yips as disastrously as THE X-FILES did.

Spender was painfully annoying. So was Fowley. I had to look her up. I'd completely forgotten Mimi Rogers stint on the show.

Title totally announced!

THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE

Chris Carter continues the tradition of coming up with ice-cool top secret production decoy titles (BLACKWOOD and DONE ONE) and silly final titles (FIGHT THE FUTURE! Fight it!).

Terrible title. Who wants to believe? Mulder? He already does. Scully? She does too. Hell, even Robert Patrick believes by now.

THE X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE THERE IS STILL AN AUDIENCE FOR THIS 10 YEARS AFTER THE FIRST FILM!

X-Files And The Purple Talons of Doom would be less laughable. All Carter's title does is blow kisses to the hardcore fans and nothing for anyone else. No, scratch that. It does do something for everyone else... it makes it sound like the movie is yet another chapter in the never-ending Alien-Government conspiracy hoo-hah that casual fans and the general public are fed up with. And that's isn't what the movie's about.

Man... Fox did better with X2: X-Men United or whatever the hell it was finally called. The Summer Season is gonna chew this one up and spit it out on DVD by Halloween.

Relax, fellas. Anyone have any ducats invested in this piece?

Bad movie titles are like the girl that sits down next to you at a picnic that you don't find immediately attractive, but she starts to talking to you and in so doing you realize she's intelligent and witty, with a ribald sense of humor, a cute laugh and a smile that makes a beautiful day even brighter.

Two hours later as you walk hand in hand towards the sunset, you won't even remember she told you her name was Gertrude.

I'm just waiting for THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES CONTINUE.

Dirty, flirty Gertie? I remember her!

Isn't RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK 21 years old?

If CRYSTAL SKULL and HULKO and X-FILES 2 were all released on the same day, I'd STILL be in line for X-FILES. There's not one single new release this year I'm more excited about. Well, except SPEED RACER, because that has a guy punching people in the face while his car flies upside down. My perspective might be skewed, but if any significant chunk of the TV audience turns out for I WANT TO BELIEVE, it sounds like a sure-thing to me. Believe!

The X-Files Nielsen Ratings

I stopped watching around the 3rd year or so but enjoyed the occasional non-conspiracy episode. I figured if they hit their nadir, it would be an episode where Leechman, Tooms, electric punk boy (diarrhea!), Firestarter Brit and whoever else showed up as a government trained "Legion of Doom"....

I don't think they ever got that low, though, which is kinda a shame. It would have been an evil MISFITS OF SCIENCE!

Shawn, I'd like to add Harriet Harris as "Eve" showing up in every other scene as a cashier, or an airline employee, or a teacher, or a drunk, or a...

Here's an interview with Carter on The Onion's A/V Club.

http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/chris_carter