An X-Files renewal could be imminent, and it’s far from game over for Pitch.
At Fox’s portion of the Television Critics Association winter press tour on Wednesday, Chairman and CEO Gary Newman and entertainment president David Madden weighed in on both series’ fates.
Regarding an 11th season of The X-Files, Madden said, “A lot of conversations are going on. As you can imagine, these conversations are complex. We hope to be able to announce something shortly.” (The exec later confirmed that the goal is to order more than Season 10’s six episodes but less than 22).
Pitch, meanwhile, remains very much in contention for Season 2, despite those disappointing ratings. “We were very proud of Pitch,” said Newman. “We would’ve loved to have seen a bigger audience. [It] had a loyal core. I don’t think the performance level enabled us to make an early decision about it, but as we get to May, we’re certainly going to consider it.”
Newman also isn’t ruling out a third season of Scream Queens, which ended Season 2 as the lowest-rated drama on the Big 4. “Obviously, we would have loved to have seen bigger numbers,” he conceded, before noting that “delayed viewing was there” and “it reaches a hard-to-reach younger audience, which we liked.”
Lastly, Madden said he was not surprised that Sleepy Hollow returned to series lows last Friday. “Bringing a show out on Friday night is tough,” he acknowledged. “We lost one of the core characters [Nicole Beharie’s Abbie], which required a real reset, and it isn’t unexpected that some of the audience would have peeled off. But our hope is that the really compelling storyline will bring people back to it.”
