Starz has made two new series orders, picking up Katori Hall’s strip club drama P-Valley (working title) based on her play Pussy Valley, executive produced by Peter Chernin, with Brandee Evans (The Bobby Brown Story) and Nicco Annan (This is Us) attached to star, and confirming a series order for Hightown (fka P-Town), about the opioid crisis, from Rebecca Cutter (Gotham), Gary Lennon (Starz’s Power) and Jerry Bruckheimer TV, and starring Chicago Fire alumna Monica Raymund. Both projects had been originally announced as part of Starz’s development slate.
Shannon Thornton (Power) and J. Alphonse Nicholson (Chicago P.D.) also join P-Valley as series regulars. Created by Hall, who also showruns, the drama is set down deep in the Mississippi Delta, where lies an oasis of grit and glitter in a rough patch of human existence where beauty can be hard to find. The southern-fried, hour-long drama tells the kaleidoscopic story of a little-strip-club-that-could and the big characters who come through its doors—the hopeful, the lost, the broken, the ballers, the beautiful, and the damned. Trap music meets film noir in this lyrical and atmospheric series that dares to ask what happens when small-town folk dream beyond the boundaries of the Piggly Wiggly and the pawnshop.
Evans stars as Mercedes and Annan as Uncle Clifford.
Hall executive produces with Chernin Entertainment. Khaliah Neal (3½ Minutes 10 Bullet) will serve as consulting producer and Patrik-Ian Polk (Being Mary Jane) is co-executive producer. Award-winning music video director Karena Evans (Drake: Nice for What) will direct the premiere episode.
Written and executive produced by Cutter, Hightown is a crime drama set amid the drug trade on Cape Cod, touched off when a body washes ashore and discovered by an irreverent National Marine Fisheries Service officer who is determined to help solve the murder even if the state cops want her nowhere near the case.
Gary Lennon will executive produce with Jerry Bruckheimer, Jonathan Littman and Kristie Anne Reed from JBTV. Production begins in March.
Starz retains all domestic multiplatform pay TV and SVOD rights to both series. Lionsgate retains all international and domestic distribution and home entertainment rights.
via Deadline