Best known to horror fans for her role as Gale Weathers in all four of Wes Craven’s Scream movies, Courteney Cox is set for a return to horror in the upcoming Starz pilot “Shining Vale.”
The half-hour horror-comedy comes from “Divorce” creator Sharon Horgan, “Trial & Error” co-creator Jeff Astrof and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment.
Deadline reports that Dearbhla Walsh (“The Handmaid’s Tale”) will direct the pilot.
“Written by Horgan and Astrof, Shining Vale 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 (Courteney Cox), the mom, who’s convinced she’s either depressed or possessed — turns out, the symptoms are exactly the same. Everyone has their demons — but are Pat’s real? Or is this the portrait of a typical family torn apart by mental illness?”
“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.”