Hulu has officially greenlit a pilot to revive the classic UFO series, with the ‘Sinners’ filmmaker writing and directing.
This logline is slightly different from the premise of Fox’s original, which debuted in 1993 and ran for nine seasons and spawned two movies. The original series kicked off with Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) being assigned to the paranormal division to help debunk true believer Agent Fox Mulder’s (David Duchovny) work.
Jennifer Yale (See, The Copenhagen Test) will serve as showrunner. The X-Files‘ original creator and showrunner, Chris Carter, will be a non-writing executive producer on the series. Sev Ohanian and Zinzi Coogler, who are Coogler’s partners at their Proximity Media banner, are also non-writing EPs on the show. Proximity’s Simone Harris is a co-executive producer.
Coogler is a great get for Hulu, with the Black Panther director red hot after delivering last year’s most celebrated surprise hit with Sinners, which is nominated for 16 Oscars.
Deadwyler has appeared in The Woman in the Yard and Netflix’s adaptation of The Piano Lesson (and earned a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for best supporting actress for the latter). She is also set to appear in HBO’s upcoming third season of Euphoria and star in HBO’s upcoming comedy series Rooster.
The X-Files will be produced by Onyx Collective and 20th Television and is returning amid a widespread surge of interest in aliens and UFOs. The topic has received congressional attention with several hearings devoted to UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), recent headlines with presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump weighing in on the topic, and Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film, Disclosure Day, having a premise that sounds straight out of The X-Files.
Yale is repped by CAA, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Hansen Jacobson. Carter is repped by CAA and Gang Tyre.
