‘Shining Vale’ Creator Was Writing Season 3 Scripts Days Before Show’s Cancelation

Shining Vale has been canceled by STARZ after its second season, but plans were seemingly in place for future episodes.

“What an absolute joy I had working on this show. Not a single bad day,” cocreator Jeff Astrof wrote via Instagram on Wednesday, December 20 before making his account private. “Please watch the STARZ (turns out limited) series Shining Vale by 12/31.”

The horror comedy will also be removed from the network’s streaming platform at the end of the year. Astrof later told Variety that he was “heartbroken” that the season 2 finale will now be a series finale and revealed he was recently working on new scripts.

“Given all the real heart-breaking news going on in the world right now, it would be inappropriate for me to say I’m heartbroken about Starz not picking up Shining Vale for a Season 3,” he told the outlet on Wednesday. “However, I have no problem saying I am crushed and deeply saddened by the news. For the actors, it has been a year since we wrapped, but I have been working on writing Season 3 up until I heard the news last week.”

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Shining Vale premiered in 2022, starring Courteney Cox and Greg Kinnear, whose characters move into an old house in a fictional Connecticut small town. The home had previously served as an asylum for hysterical women and Cox’s Pat Phelps claims it is haunted. Shining Vale also starred Mira Sorvino, Judith Light, Gus Birney, Sherilyn Fenn and Merrin Dungey.

“I was excited to play someone so layered. I’ve never played a character that had so much going on,” Cox, 59, told AV Club in March 2022. “They are going through marital strife, she’s depressed, she has an affair, she has writer’s block, she’s raising a teenager, which is in itself a challenge. And then she gets possessed.”

Kinnear, 60, played Pat’s husband, Terry, and called Shining Vale a “fun show.”

“A screwball comedy version of this show was not interesting to me. Being funny is great, but keeping it grounded and real was paramount, I think, to everybody,” Kinnear told Entertainment Weekly in March 2022. “In the case of Shining Vale, I just felt like there was the promise of something that felt a little different than what I had seen. And I felt like the comedy in this show mixed in with the mental illness issue that [Pat] is possibly dealing with — or possibly not — along with creating a family dynamic that you care about, and watching these people in this very stressed out environment of having to relocate and try and amend a broken family, was just an interesting tapestry."

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Season 2 aired earlier this year, with the conclusion of its eight episodes premiering on December 1. Astrof is now hopeful that Shining Vale will find a new home on another network.

“I’m hoping another streamer picks the show up as we still have lots of story to tell — and Season 3 has already been partially written,” he added to Variety on Wednesday. “In any case, I am beyond grateful to have been able to tell the saga of the Phelps [family] for the past two seasons.”