Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny stepped arm in arm on the red carpet for the Los Angeles premiere of movie "The X-Files: I Want To Believe," in which they both reprise the roles that made them famous, FBI agents Mulder and Scully.

Six years after the wildly popular science-fiction television series wrapped up, fans of the show will finally reunite with their favorite FBI agents, who will return from retirement to help solve an abduction case.

Closely guarded throughout the movie's development, the storyline of the new X-Files movie coming out Friday focuses more on the relationship between Dana Scully, who returned to medicine and became a surgeon, and Fox Mulder, who spends his days clipping articles from newspapers in his hideaway. The two join FBI agents Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Drummy (rapper Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner) in their search of a missing colleague.

"I thought I would fall back into Mulder very naturally, but at first playing the character felt a little odd," said Duchovny, who can still whip out a wicked one-liner. "I didn’t want to make any drastic changes in the way I played Mulder because the character is so well-known. But of course I’m older now, and so is Mulder, so some things had to change."

Although it took so long to make, Anderson, Duchovny and moviemaker Chris Carter revealed they wanted to do the movie even as the show was beginning to wrap.

"We came up with the story and they said great and we negotiated everybody's contracts and all was working, then all of a sudden it came to a grinding halt, because there were business problems with the television show and contracts going backwards," Carter said.

"That ended up taking years to resolve. That's simply why we are doing it now."
In the meantime, Anderson moved from Hollywood to London, where she made several appearances in two stage productions and is preparing for a third while Duchovny starred in a new TV series "Californication" for which he won a lead-actor Golden Globe this year.

The X-Files series ran between 1993 and 2002, with the first feature film, "Fight The Future," released in 1998 which grossed $187 million worldwide.