WIRE Buzz: Courteney Cox playing porno-writer; Fangoria drops Porno trailer; more

First up in this "horror-comedies with a porn theme" edition of WIRE Buzz (you’ll see), Courteney Cox is set to star in the horror-comedy pilot Shining Vale for Starz, the network has announced. The former Scream queen plays the lead role of Patricia “Pat” Phelps, a former “wild child” who rose to fame by writing a raunchy, drug-and-alcohol-soaked women’s empowerment novel … okay, fine. She wrote a porn novel.

Now, 17 years later, Pat is clean, sober, and miserable. 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 wish she were dead.

In a last-ditch effort to save her marriage, Pat and her dysfunctional family move from the city to a small town, into a large, old house in which terrible atrocities have taken place. There Pat becomes convinced she’s either depressed or possessed (apparently the symptoms are exactly the same).

The half-hour comedy from Jeff Astrof and Sharon Horgan is produced by Warner Bros. Television and Lionsgate in association with Other Shoe Productions, Merman, and Kapital Entertainment. Astrof wrote the pilot, from a story by Horgan & Astrof. Dearbhla Walsh (The Handmaid’s Tale) is directing and executive-producing the pilot.

And speaking of horror-comedies centered around porn, Fangoria has released a trailer for its latest cinematic offering: a new horror-comedy called Porno. (See? We told you!)

In Keola Racela’s sendup of the raunchy Dead Teenager Movie genre of decades past, three teenagers working at a movie theater in 1992 (the theatre’s marquee boasts Encino Man and A League of Their Own) uncover a print to a very trippy-looking movie, and in doing so unleash "a sex demon,” in one usher’s words. Cue all hell breaking loose set to wailing electric guitar licks.

Check out the surprisingly SFW trailer here:

Clearly Porno is going for a midnight feature at a grindhouse vibe, a la Demons or Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, with its tongue planted firmly in cheek (which seems to be Fangoria’s M.O. for much of its cinematic output). 

Porno comes to select theaters on April 10, and then VOD on May 8.

And finally, in production news centered around yet another horror (yet sadly not one centered around a porno ... seriously, we tried to go three-for-three on this one), Deadline is reporting that Sony is pushing the release date for Escape Room 2  to Dec. 30 from Aug. 14. This is actually yet another push back on its release date, as Escape Room 2 was originally slated to hit theaters on April 17.

The original Escape Room centered around a group of people signing up for one of those titular immersive puzzle/adventure experiences only to discover that the dangers are real and their lives are in jeopardy. The film, which had a budget of $9 million, raked in roughly $155 million globally, so naturally the studio fast-tracked a sequel.

Adam Robitel, who helmed the original, is returning to the director's chair, while Bragi F. Schut is reprising his role as screenwriter. The cast includes returning stars Taylor Russell and Logan Miller, as well as newcomers Holland Roden (Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block), Indya Moore (Pose), Thomas Cocquerel (The 100), and Carlito Olivero (Step Up: High Water).