Series put city on the map in the 1990s as a place to film science fiction television.

David Duchovny will be reaching once again for his umbrella, and so will at least 100 crew members in the city as 20th Century Fox made it official: the sequel to 1998's The X-Files movie will shoot in Vancouver.

The movie, as yet untitled, brings together Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as special FBI agents Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson) who, in the original television series and in the first movie, encounter paranormal activity in their investigations.

Duchovny and Anderson starred in the long-running TV series The X-Files (1993-2002), which shot its first five seasons in the Vancouver area. The show moved to Los Angeles in 1998 for a number of reasons, including Duchovny wanting to spend more time with his actress wife Tea Leoni. In interviews after he joked about the wet weather in Vancouver, which prompted many people to believe that was the reason for the move.

The first X-Files movie was shot in California, British Columbia, New Jersey and London, England. It was shot on a budget of about $65 million, and went on to gross $187 million worldwide.

Show creator Chris Carter will direct and co-produce the new film from a screenplay he co-wrote with Frank Spotnitz, who also co-produces. Production begins in Vancouver on Dec. 10, and the movie will be released on July 25, 2008.

Back in the mid-1990s, The X-Files series put Vancouver on the map as a place to shoot science fiction. The sizable crew that worked on the show gave it a trademark look, and a number of B.C. crew members won Emmy Awards, including art directors Gary Allen, Shirley Inget and Graeme Murray, and sound mixer Michael Williamson.

The success of The X-Files, which was one of the 10 most-watched network shows in Canada and the U.S. during its years shooting in Vancouver, and two other Vancouver-made shows of that era, The Outer Limits and Poltergeist: The Legacy, brought other paranormal-themed or outright science fiction series here, including Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Andromeda, Millennium (another Carter creation, a police drama that morphed into supernatural subjects), Supernatural, as well as current series Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Kyle-XY and Flash Gordon.