Okay, let’s pretend for a minute that your Johnny Depp. You’ve made quite a few movies, are respected as an actor, recognized around the world as a big star and brought Disney a boatload of money for your work as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates franchise. With all that, what do you do?

If you’re Johnny Depp, it seems one of the things you do is get Disney to buy the rights to one of your favorite 70′s TV series with an eye to turning it into a feature film for you to star in. That series? Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

According to reports, Depp is a fan of the series and got Disney interested in a feature version with Depp to star as tabloid reporter Carl Kolchak, a role originally played by the awesome Darren McGavin in the TV movie and subsequent series. Could be interesting with Depp in the role.

In case you’re not familiar with the show, it centered on McGavin as Kolchak, a dogged investigative journalist with a nose for the macabre and supernatural. Even though his investigations often started out normal enough, in most cases they ended up leading him down a dark path into the world of vampires, zombies, werewolves and aliens.

The show was pretty cool, especially for its time, and is often cited by various insiders, including creator Chris Carter, as one of the main inspirations for TV’s The X-Files. I loved the show as a kid and look forward to seeing what Depp and company can do with it.

The project will soon go out to writers. More on this as is develops.

If you have been eagerly anticipating Friday’s release of The Fourth Kind, here is a creepy little featurette from Universal and Yahoo Movies to prime you for the movie — which you can watch after the jump. It’s no spoiler to note that the plot of the movie has to do with missing people in Alaska, and possible alien abduction. This featurette provides a back-story, so to speak, about the four different kinds of alien encounters.

Still can’t sate your appetite for alien abduction? If so, take a look at these other genre titles while you are biding your time. And, look for our review of The Fourth Kind on Friday.

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) – Arguably the best known in the genre. This movie terrified me when I saw it as a child. Steven Speilberg’s follow up to Jaws racked up several oscar nominations and won for best cinematography.

John William’s chilling musical score remains iconic to this day. Teri Garr and Richard Dreyfuss enjoyed career boosts from their roles, and Lance Henriksen (Aliens, Millennium) even makes an appearance.

• Fire in the Sky (1993) – Laugh if you will, but this film that starred D.B. Sweeney was based on a true story, and it has a serious faction of fans. Over the years I’ve heard several people who are alien junkies insist this is one of the most horrifying depictions of abduction. Based on a logger’s disappearance in the woods in 1975, and his unexplained reappearance, this film has a cult-like following.

• Communion (1989) – Based on the terrifying book by Whitley Strieber. In my humble opinion, the book was much better, but Christopher Walken is always a plus. Not the best movie in the group, but no alien abduction list is complete without it.

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Roland Emmerich is getting a lot of attention right now for his upcoming end-of-the-world-blow-absolutely-everything-up movie 2012.  I’ll admit it, I’m a fan of Emmerich’s work, especially the ones in which he gives us unprecedented levels of destruction. Honestly, 2012 makes The Day After Tomorrow look like a warm up.

However, there was a television show that prophesied about the end of the world long before Emmerich planned the wanton destruction in 2012.  The show was Millennium, created by The X-Files visionary Chris Carter. The show followed Frank Black (Lance Henrikson) as an ex- FBI agent with the ability to see into the minds of killers and track them down.

All this while dealing with the enigmatic Millennium group who tried to prevent the world from coming to an apocalyptic end in the year 2000 (hence the name). The show was pretty dark for its time but brilliant all the same. So brilliant it was inevitably canceled. Such is the life of thought-provoking television (e.g. Dead Like Me, Firefly).

In fact, Millennium may take the record for biggest cancellation upset ever as Fox pulled the plug in 1999. Yes, the network couldn’t even bring it back to conclude its own prophetic doomsday plot. While Carter tried to finish Black’s story in a subsequent X-Files episode, appropriately titled “Millennium”, the cross-over fell flat. The episode was a complete disservice to the series but hopefully Fox is looking to make up for that mistake.

Screen Rant is reporting that Henrikson has been approached by private investors to make a Millennium movie.  Moreover, Fox is apparently interested in doing something with the property.  This prospect may or may not include Chris Carter.

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Let me start by saying I never saw The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Simply put, I just didn’t believe it could be good. Based on the reviews and what friends have told me, I was right.

Since news started to come out about the premise of the last X-Files film I knew they were taking the characters down the wrong path. The pseudo monster-of-the-week episodes the series was known for worked well enough on TV, but you want something pretty big for a feature film. Really big.

The first movie got it right in my opinion. Conspiracy. Aliens. Giant UFOs. That’s movie caliber material. Mulder and Scully waxing poetic about a psychic priest in the sequel? Not so much.

It pains me a little to call out the second film like that because I’m a huge X-Files fan. That comes with sincerity as I have Mulder and Scully action figures within arms reach and the first film’s movie poster adorning my wall. Fortunately, it sounds like plans for a new X-Files film may return to the conspiracy-laden content us fans loved so much.

In a recent interview, David Duchovny gave some indication that should a third X-Files film happen it would get back to its roots:

“As far as the X-Files movie I’d like to do next, if we get a chance to do it, would be a return to the heart and soul of the mythology, which is the alien-oriented conspiracy. I think it’s natural for The X-Files to have another movie in 2012, so we’ll see if we get to do it.”

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