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 Divorce creator Sharon Horgan and Trial & Error co-creator Jeff Astrof. The half-hour show hails from Warner Bros. Television and Lionsgate in association with Astrof’s Other Shoe Productions, Horgan and Clelia Mountford’s Merman and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment.
Written by Astrof from a story he wrote with Horgan, Shining Vale stems from an idea by Kaplan. It follows 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.
Sorvino will play Rosemary, who is either Pat’s alter ego, a split personality, her id, her muse, or a demon trying to possess her. Sometimes playful, sometimes evil, often tragic, Rosemary has been roaming the halls of Pat’s new house for 70 years, searching for a vulnerable soul to live vicariously through. She sees in Pat a kindred spirit: Like Pat, she was unfulfilled in her role as a dutiful housewife — and as a result, she may or may not have slaughtered her entire family, straightened up the house, then took her own life in the bathtub that Pat now uses to relax. In any case, Rosemary promises to help Pat get her groove back and finish her novel, if Pat will simply agree to let Rosemary “come inside her,” a bargain that may haunt Pat forever.
Dungey plays Kam, Pat’s oldest friend and book editor, a no-bulls**t straight talker who knows and loves Pat more than Pat does herself. Kam has been with Pat through the highs of Pat selling her first novel to the lows of everything that has happened since. She is the one person Pat can rely on for tough love, but Kam is running out of patience: If Pat does not give Kam a book she can sell, then Kam will have no choice but to leave her — this time for good.
Gus Birney and Dylan Gage also star.
Horgan and Mountford executive produce via Merman alongside Astrof through his Other Shoe Productions and Kapital’s Kaplan and Dana Honor. Dearbhla Walsh is set to direct and executive produce the pilot. Warner Bros. Television and Lionsgate produce in association with Other Shoe Productions, Merman and Kapital Entertainment.
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.
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.
