Happy birthday to Dana Katherine Scully, born on February 23, 1964! She has reached the round and respectable age of 60. By now she must have retired from the FBI, after becoming FBI Director! Incredible that her abduction back in season 2 was 30 years ago, which is now just at the mid-point in her life…
The X-Files reference in the wild! This is from Zerocalcare: “Ce vojo crede” in good Roman — meaning “voglio crederci” everywhere else in Italy. Both his animated series in Netflix I highly recommend! (Strappare lungo i bordi, Questo mondo non mi renderà cattivo) #romaantifascista
From yesterday’s Directors Guild of America (DGA) Awards, where David Nutter got a lifetime achievement award! And a part of his speech, where he talks about directing with Parkinson’s. Also present were David Duchovny and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) but also Rob McLachlan (Millennium cinematographer), Chris Carter, Jim Wong, Glen Morgan & Kristen Cloke.
Nutter directed *loads* of things. For us, he directed among Ten Thirteen’s best hours:
In TXF s1-3: Ice – Beyond the Sea – Lazarus – Shapes – Tooms – Roland – Little Green Men – Blood – 3 – Firewalker – Irresistible – Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose – 2Shy – Nisei – Revelations
In Millennium s1: Pilot – Gehenna – 522666 – Loin Like a Hunting Flame
The X-Files video game that never was! Chris Carter had mentioned that a video game was in preparation in a couple of past interviews, but we all assumed he meant the short-lived Android-based “Deep State”. Apparently, there was a big game in development around the time of the revival but it never came to completion. The game developer Nico Augusto, also a TXF fan and a UFO/paranormal enthusiast, provided lots of behind the scenes details and visuals. I see no reason to doubt his claims.
– The game development was to be announced during the airing of the revival / season 10 [i.e., 2016].
– Small French/Californian company Any Arts Production was chosen by Fox to develop the game in the summer of 2015.
– A playable demo was created to promote the project to executives and investors, with case files graphics, a 3D model of the XF office and a night scene in the woods where Scully is abducted by a ray of light.
– For PS4/XBox; third view, player would be Mulder; stealth investigative game, some chases and action; taking gameplay/mood inspiration from Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, Uncharted; running on Unreal Engine.
– Intended plot: Scully dies during an investigation; Mulder somehow tracks down the scientist from “Synchrony” in order to be able to travel back in time and save Scully; Mulder finds himself travelling all over the timeline, revisiting past cases, such as “The Host” or the Mulder cottage in Quonochontaug. [Sounds completely crazy, but it allows the player to re-live some of the series’ past, which ticks many boxes]
– Approved by all parties involved, including Fox Interactive and Chris Carter. Some names from the video game industry that were involved: John Melchior, David Stelzer.
– Voice actors were approached and agreed in principle, including Duchovny (hard to get!), Anderson, Pileggi.
– The budget was going to be some $ 35 million [which is not small for a game based on an old IP like TXF!] and was going to be developed over an estimated 3.5 years before release.
– But Fox just gave the license, they were not going to finance it directly [a classic move by current-day standards, subcontract all the risk!…]; the financing setup was going to be the role for other entities. The development very slowly fell apart when sufficient funds could not be gathered together to secure the necessary budget.
Details from Any Arts head Nico Augusto (in French; includes some additional concept art in the background): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO3ad_QVQcM
Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48Xu8IdNN84
Nico in Los Angeles around the time of the launch of the revival: https://www.instagram.com/nico_augusto_/p/B3DGDqXo40V/
I am not a big video game player but this would have been a cool thing to witness — although I played *a lot* the old TXF game on PC, so maybe I was the target group too? With the Fox/Disney reshuffle and the revival being less successful than planned (probably?), it looks like any plans for another TXF video game are shelved.
With thanks to Nicolò Cantoni!
On the holidays treat yourself with The X-Files Virtual Season 12. It’s fanfic that tries to capture the overall style of the show semi-professionally, a group of writers that produced stories in the format of scripts (like Millennium VS4 before it). There’s a mix of mythology, stand-alones, comedy, experimental, and stories grabbed from present-day conspiracy circles or urban legends. Plus, it continues on from the Struggles and was written as a final-final season, it wraps everything up at the end in a quite satisfactory way. Written in 2018 but I only read it this year. Happy holidays!
[FRENCH] Décidément, il y a plein de choses avec lesquelles je suis en désaccord sur ces commentaires sur la s7, mais c’est indéniable que c’est la plus faible saison des 7 premières. Dommage qu’il y a eu autant de choses qui sont venues après, parce que je suis de ceux qui pensent que Requiem aurait bien marché comme un series finale.
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