Oscar winner Mira Sorvino and Merrin Dungey are set as leads opposite Courteney Cox and Greg Kinnear in Shining Vale, Starz’s horror-comedy pilot from Merman co-founder Sharon Horgan and Trial & Error co-creator Jeff Astrof. The half-hour show hails from Warner Bros. Television and Lionsgate in association with Merman Television, Astrof’s Other Shoe Productions, and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment.
Dearbhla Walsh (The Handmaid’s Tale, Traitors) is set to direct the pilot for the half-hour comedy.
Written by Astrof from a story by him and Horgan, Shining Vale stems from an idea by Kaplan. The horror-comedy is about a dysfunctional family that moves from the city to a small town into a house in which terrible atrocities have taken place. But no one seems to notice except for Pat (Cox), who’s convinced she’s either depressed or possessed – turns out, the symptoms are exactly the same.
Cox’s Patricia “Pat” Phelps is a former “wild child” who rose to fame by writing a raunchy, drug-and-alcohol-soaked women’s empowerment novel (aka lady porn). Fast-forward 17 years, and Pat is clean and sober but totally unfulfilled. She still hasn’t written her second novel, she can’t remember the last time she had sex with her husband, and her teenage kids are at that stage where they love their vile friends and want you dead. She was a faithful wife until her one slip-up: a torrid 15-night stand with a hot, young artist/handyman/musician neighbor. In a last-ditch effort to save her marriage, she and her family move from the “crazy” of the city to a large, old house in the suburbs where evil and humor collide.
Horgan and Mountford executive produce via Merman alongside Astrof through his Other Shoe Productions and Kapital’s Kaplan and Dana Honor. Walsh exec produces the pilot.
Sorvino was most recently seen in Ryan Murphy’s Emmy-nominated Netflix series Hollywood as the Lana Turner-inspired star Jeanne Crandall. Other recent credits include the 20th Century feature Stuber opposite Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani, and director Mary Harron’s thriller The Expecting. She’s repped by APA and Circle of Confusion.
Dungey recently portrayed Detective Quinlan in HBO’s Big Little Lies. Her other credits include a turn as CEO Claire Thorpe on Fox’s The Resident and a starring role in legal dram The Fix. She’ll next be seen on the sixth and final season of Lucifer on Netflix.
