FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully will be back for another set of alien-investigating adventures.
The FOX network announced this week that The X-Files revival that began with last year’s six-episode season will continue with an upcoming eleventh season of the hit series that will premiere later this year. The new season will include 10 episodes and will once again be executive produced by X-Files creator Chris Carter.
Naturally, series stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson will also be reprising their roles as Mulder and Scully, respectively.
“Iconic characters, rich storytelling, bold creators – these are the hallmarks of great TV shows. And they are some of the reasons why The X-Files has had such a profound impact on millions of fans worldwide,” said FOX Broadcasting Company President David Madden in a statement accompanying the announcement. “Chris’ creativity, along with the brilliant work of David and Gillian, continue to propel this pop-culture phenomenon, and we can’t wait to see what fresh mysteries Mulder and Scully uncover in this next chapter of The X-Files.”
Filming on the new season of The X-Files is expected to begin this summer.
One of the most popular television series of all time, The X-Files premiered in 1993 and initially ran for nine consecutive seasons on FOX, winning 16 Emmy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, and a Peabody Award.
The series spawned two feature films, multiple television spinoff series, and several comic book and game tie-in projects before returning in 2016 for a six-episode tenth season. Last year’s revival of the series on FOX was a commercial success, as well as one of the most-watched — and most talked-about — series on television for the year.
Although several episodes of the recent revival season were criticized, the overwhelming sentiment regarding the season was that the stand-alone episodes — as opposed to the “mythology” episodes that involved the series’ long-running alien abduction themes — were some of the show’s best.
