By David Wharton | 8 years ago

It’s been four years since Mulder and Scully returned to the big screen with the thud of a dud that was the second film, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Sadly, that flick was more in the vein of a forgettable monster-of-the-week episode than the epic last hooray for our favorite FBI agents. While there have been rumblings about a possible third X-Files movie at some point in the future, it’s still remained very much in the “unconfirmed rumors” column. Now Frank Spotnitz, a veteran X-Filer who co-wrote the last movie with creator Chris Carter, has sounded off on the prospect of a third film…as well as the possibility of the show getting a TV reboot.

While Spotnitz doesn’t have any concrete info about when/if a third X-Files movie could happen, he does say that he and Carter already know what the movie would be about. Thankfully for those of us who sat through I Want to Believe, the third film would venture back into the show’s wheelhouse — nasty aliens plotting bad things. Speaking to Den of Geek, Spotnitz said:

I mean I’ve known for many years what I would like the movie to be and I’ve been talking to Chris Carter about it for many years, but there is no script … It’s the climax of the alien colonization story that began the series.

It’s a shame that they weren’t able to get the new X-Files movie together in time for release this year, since we’ve nearly reached December 21, 2012 — aside from being the supposed Mayan-predicted end of the world, it was the date the aliens would begin full-on colonizing the Earth according to the show’s mythology. Honestly, much as I’d love to see another good X-Files movie to usher Mulder and Scully into retirement more gracefully, it feels as if the show’s time has come and gone. If they can’t put together a genuinely epic sendoff, I’d rather just go back and appreciate the show itself on Netflix or DVD or whatever..

There is, of course, another possible way for us to get new X-Files — an outright reboot. While the prospect of somebody new playing the roles that David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson made iconic likely generates a wave of nausea in loyal fans, let’s face it: they rebooted Star Trek, so you can damn well bet they’ll reboot X-Files if they think there’s money to be made from it.

For Spotnitz’s part, he emphasizes that there’s no actual X-Files reboot in the works at the moment, but he’s realistic about the prospect of one happening at one point.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all. I mean, I don’t think I would have anything to do with it but you know, for better or for worse, these things are titles of big corporations, like Star Trek belongs to Paramount and The X-Files belongs to Twentieth Century Fox and it’s a huge asset in their libraries so I can’t imagine they would let it sit languishing forever. Anything could happen. I just hope that if they do it, they do it well, that’s my only request.

You and me both, Frankie.