The X-Files is officially reopening. Hulu announced Tuesday that it has ordered Ryan Coogler’s reimagining of the landmark sci-fi series to series, moving the project forward after a pilot that has been building buzz all year.
Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel will star as two highly decorated but vastly different FBI agents who form an unlikely bond when they are assigned to a long-shuttered division devoted to cases involving unexplained phenomena. They are playing brand-new characters, not new versions of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, the roles David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson made iconic across the original run.
Coogler, the filmmaker behind Sinners and Black Panther, wrote and directed the pilot and will executive produce through his Proximity Media banner. Jennifer Yale, whose credits include See and Underground, will serve as showrunner. Original series creator Chris Carter is an executive producer, though he has described his own role as more of a cheerleader, saying he would rather watch the new series as a fan than read the scripts.
“I’ve loved The X-Files for a long time, so getting the chance to write and direct the pilot has meant a great deal to me,” Coogler said in a statement. “What Chris Carter created is special, and we wanted to honor everything that made the original series connect with so many people while also finding our own way into that world.”
Joining Deadwyler and Patel in the cast are Amy Madigan, Steve Buscemi, Ben Foster, Devery Jacobs, Lochlyn Munro, Tantoo Cardinal, Joel D. Montgrand and Sofia Grace Clifton. Ludwig Göransson, Coogler’s longtime collaborator, composed the score for the pilot. The series comes from Onyx Collective and 20th Television, and Hulu has not announced a premiere date.
The series order caps a road that started more than three years ago, when Carter first revealed that Coogler was planning to bring the show back. Hulu ordered the pilot earlier this year, and the early signs were strong: over the summer, Anderson read Coogler’s pilot script and called it brilliant, and Patel told the Happy Sad Confused podcast, via The Playlist, that shooting the pilot “was very special.”
The timing comes with a wink longtime fans will appreciate. The announcement landed on October 13, a date fans celebrate as X-Files Day, because it is both Carter’s birthday and the birthday of Mulder himself. If the news sends you back to the original cases, all 11 seasons of The X-Files, 218 episodes including the 2016 revival, are streaming free on Pluto TV, both on demand and on a dedicated 24/7 X-Files channel.