We All Love ‘The X-Files’. And Now Ryan Coogler Is Putting His Spin On It.
After years of fans wanting to believe, Ryan Coogler’s take on a sci-fi staple is finally becoming a reality.
This week, it was officially announced that Coogler’s reboot of The X-Files has received a pilot order from Hulu. Coogler will write, direct, and executive produce the project under his Proximity Media production company. Jennifer Yale, whose previous work includes The Copenhagen Test and Your Friends & Neighbors, will serve as showrunner and executive producer.
Actress Danielle Deadwyler is set to star as one of the series’ two lead roles, with the other actor to be cast at a later date. According to the officially-released logline, in this new pilot of The X-Files, “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.”
Coogler’s take on The X-Files has been in various stages of development since 2023, after original X-Files creator Chris Carter revealed that the Oscar-nominated Sinners director had reached out to him about a potential reboot of the series. While updates on the project have been scarce since then, Coogler has previously indicated the personal connection he has to the source material.
“Like my relationship with Rocky with my dad, The X-Files is one of those things with my mom,” Coogler previously told Variety in October 2025. “My mom means the world to me…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.”
The original run of The X-Files, starring Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, ran on Fox from 1993 through 2002 for nine seasons and one spinoff movie. The series was then revived twice, with a movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe in 2008, and a two-season revival on Fox in 2016. It is not clear at this point if Anderson, Duchovny, or any of the original cast will reprise their roles in Coogler’s incarnation of the show.
What About Black Panther 3?
The X-Files is far from the only genre project that fans have been eager to see from Coogler, as speculation continues to swirl around his work on Marvel Studios’ Black Panther 3. Updates on that project have been few and far between since the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in 2022, especially with some of its ensemble cast reprising their roles in Avengers: Doomsday later this year (and presumably in Avengers: Secret Wars in the following year).
Funny enough, the biggest update surrounding Black Panther 3 came from legendary actor Denzel Washington, who let it slip in a 2024 interview that Coogler was writing a role in the film for him. Coogler confirmed as much the following year, indicating that he’s going to do everything he can to make it happen.
“I’ve been dying to work with Denzel,” Coogler told the Nightcap podcast. “I’m hoping we can make that happen. I’ve got every intention of working with him on that movie. As long as he’s interested, man, it’s going to happen. He’s a living legend and a great mentor for so many of us. He’s all about looking out for us, now.”
More recently, Coogler confirmed that Black Panther 3 is, in fact, his next project following The X-Files… and will be his feature follow-up to Sinners.
“If it was anybody but you, I would say, ‘I can neither confirm or deny,’” Coogler revealed during Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles panel for Sinners in November of last year. “But we’re working on it hard. … Yeah, it’s the next movie.”
(featured image: Fox)
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