When Will ‘The X-Files’ Return To Fox?

While FOX has yet to officially renew “The X-Files” for an eleventh season, there already appears to be a timeframe in which the network hopes to bring the potential new installment.

After FOX’s panel at the Television Critics Association’s (TCA) winter press tour on Wednesday, Jan. 11, FOX entertainment president David Madden told reporters when fans will likely see the return of Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) to TV.

“I think the ideal is to get it ready for ‘18. Whether or not it would be January,” Madden said, according to E! News.

While it’s unclear why it will take that long, Dana Walden — chairman and CEO of the FOX Television Group — said at the TCA summer press tour last year that working out Duchovny, Anderson and series creator Chris Carter’s busy schedules was a challenge.

“It was really the limitations of David and Gillian and Chris’ schedules,” Walden said at the time (via TVLine). Gillian lives in the UK, David lives in New York and California, and we do the show in Vancouver. Chris lives up north. So it was just trying to coordinate a time where they all carve out a period to be in Vancouver.”

Although fans have to wait a little longer for a potential Season 11, viewers will definitely be happy to know that the upcoming installment will consist of more episodes.

“It won’t be 22, but we are hoping for more than six. That’s our goal,” Madden said on Wednesday.

In February last year, Carter expressed his confidence that there will be more episodes of “The X-Files” in the future. “I can’t imagine, with the ratings that we’ve got and the way we ended Season 6, that there won’t be more ‘X-Files,’” he told TVLine. “They will find a way to get that done. Because I spoke about it briefly with Dana Walden... so there’s an appetite there and ... a chance certainly to find how we’re gonna get ourselves off this precipice.”