David Duchovny has lifted the lid on the revival of The X-Files, saying he always assumed it would move away from TV and into a film franchise until the second movie didn’t do as well as hoped.

The actor and his co-star Gillian Anderson are set to return to the small screen as agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in the hit sci-fi investigation drama, which this time will run for six episodes only.

After nine years on TV and two films, The X-Files has been on a break since 2008 and David told the Hollywood Reporter: “When I was doing the show, I always assumed – because we started to do the movies – that we would naturally transition to not carrying the load of doing a full season of the show but doing a movie every four or five years.

The X-Files
David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as Mulder and Scully in The X-Files (Twentieth Century Fox)

“That didn’t work out with the movies. [The second movie] did well, but I guess not well enough. Fox made some mistakes with that movie that hurt the franchise and they didn’t seem to want to do another movie. So as the TV landscape changed and as it became conceivable to do this show without doing 22 or 25 [episodes] of them on television, then it seemed like a natural thing.

“We all started to think, ‘I don’t mind doing it on TV if we don’t have to do a full season’. We just could make it like a six-hour movie.”

David went on that he was looking forward to getting back into character: “It’s been a while since I’ve played Mulder so it’s going to be strange for sure the first couple days. Luckily Gillian will be there and we’ll be there for each other to say, ‘That doesn’t seem right’ or something like that.

Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny
Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny (Evan Agostini/AP)

“All the principals are back. Chris (Carter, series creator) will be there, Gillian will be there, I’ll be there and we can all check on each other and say, ‘Is this the show?’ Because we’ll find it. It’s just a matter of relaxing and letting it happen.

“It’s going to be the same show. It’s obviously going to be different times and the characters are going to be older and all of the things that are going to be changing naturally will change.”