The X-Files: I Want To Believe was held up for several years because of lawsuits from David Duchovny and Chris Carter against Twentieth-Century Fox over syndication revenues. (Fox sold the rerun rights to FX, part of the greater News Corporation conglomerate, instead of letting other networks compete for the chance to rerun the show; once that was resolved, they didn't compensate profit participants including Carter according to the deals that were made). If those lawsuits hadn't occured, I bet a movie would have happened earlier, and been made for a bigger budget. As it happens, it had been several years since the series ended when they made the second film, and Fox wasn't confident that the fanbase existed to support a big-budget movie. Either they were proven right or the low-budget, standalone movie they wanted became a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the movie failed hard at the box office. That's going to be quite a hurdle for a prospective third film to overcome, although stranger things have happened.
The X-files 2 should have been made and released right after the series ended. Instead Fox had to ruin this franchise by being greedy and not paying what was owed to the two stars. This is the same reason it took so long for PJ to make The Hobbit.
I think if you had an X-Files movie that returned to being a little more grand in scale (with better promotion) and was about the alien mythology again, people would largely forget about the mess of the second movie and go to theaters. The characters are still beloved, and many of the fans have been hoping for something to be done about the 2012 colonization for years. Alien movies are a big deal again right now (and frequently come back into style), so if it came out in a year or two it wouldn't seem to be bunched in with all of those or too distant from the trend that people are completely over it.
Alien movies have always been big. Remember the Transformers movies? Avatar? They just didn't get big this year.
Well, there's also the fact that Carter and Co. continued the series several years beyond its logical ending point, even after the two stars had bailed, and tainted the show's quality with a lot of really, really bad episodes and then a bad movie that openly tried to be more like "CSI" than "The X Files" because of what was trendy in pop culture at the moment. That right there was enough to permanently damage the franchise. X-Files was really good up to a point, but it's clearly been over for quite some time. The only chance we'll see anything new is maybe in 10 to 15 years when Hollywood goes for the inevitable reboot with new actors.
Anderson never bailed, she was in every episode of Season 8 & 9 except one and her role was only cut back in a few episodes.
I'd love to see a third movie to wrap up the show, and the actors seem up for it. If only they found a way to get the money. I also vaguely remember once reading something about ideas/plans for a (direct-to-tv or -dvd) Millennium movie, with possible guest roles for secondary X-Files characters, like Doggett. I guess that also never moved beyond the "wouldn't it be cool" stage...
There was actually talk a year or two ago about a third film. One that would use some of the old mythology. Both actors are willing, as is Carter. FOX was even mulling it. While the 2nd film did bad in the box office, if they did a 3rd one right and released it at a better time of year, it could do well. Especially with nostalgia and now rumors of Duchovny and Anderson being romantically involved.
I stand corrected. I haven't watched those seasons since they aired, and given that the focus primarily was on Doggett and Reyes, I guess I'd forgotten that Scully was even still around ...
The focus of Season 8 was definitely not Doggett and Reyes. In fact, I'd even say Season 8 could be called "Scully's Search for Mulder." I was surprised how much I loved it when I ended up re-watching that season.
I think the third-film-talk has never gone beyond Duchovny and Carter (and perhaps Anderson) expressing their willingness to make one. I don't remember ever hearing that Fox (the company that is, not the Mulder) was seriously interested. As for the romance rumours, I thought they had been quickly dispelled? If they are true, I'm not sure we should be happy with that, from a 3rd film point of view (I'm sure it's wonderful for the actors and I wish them all the best, if it's true), because if there ever is a break up, the chances for a movie would dwindle even more I'd assume. True. I think Reyes was only in two or three episodes in season 8. Iirc she had a guest role in one episode during the season and then came back for the finale two-parter? In season 9, Scully was in the background a lot, except in the episodes that dealt directly with Mulder.
It's almost inevitable they'll be another film at some point, it's just most likely to be a full on remake with new actors riding a 90's nostalgia boom. The big problem with doing a movie to wrap up the conspiracy stuff is no one cares. Just about everyone but the most dedicated fans had long given up on that side of things long before the series ended, it was always the monster of the week stuff that tended to stand out more for Joe Public. Ironically that's one area the last film got it right, it dropped the baggage and concentrated on a stand alone story that (Skinner appearance aside, there was no real explanation of who he was for new viewers and no attempt to explain how he got away from Jim Robinson alive for fans) tried to be as accesible as possible. The problem is it just wasn't a very good story with an uneven tone (it goes from being a fairly straight thriller with mild supernatural overtones to a loon out to do a head transplant. Having the gay villain trying to put his head on a womans body has unfortunate implications as well). Duchovney and even the usually reliable Anderson are clearly bored rigid as well. And frankly Carter had his chance to wrap everything up with the two hour final of the show. He chose not to, instead having characters stand about trying to explain the last 9 years worth of convoluted plots without resolving them but instead making you finally realise what a load of old bollocks the whole thing was. Does he really deserve another chance, especially when, based on recent form, it's not likely to be very good? Generally I like the last two seasons (Robert Patrick is a huge shot in the arm for the show), but that's one one of the worst last episodes of anything ever.
I've found that when I re-watched the show that the story arcs weren't convoluted at all. When it first aired, I thought the super soldiers storyline came out of nowhere. Having re-watched it recently, I now realize that there were super soldiers as early as Season 1. They just weren't called that yet. The whole plot makes sense, but so much of it got spread out over the 9 years of the show that it became hard to follow.
Oh, it (just about, with a lot of squinting) makes sense. It's just the final episode goes out of its way to make the whole thing look like a load of crap.
Yeah, the whole "clip show" aspect of it was pretty annoying, but I rather enjoyed the final half of the finale, and the last scene with Mulder and Scully in the hotel is one of my favorites.