Having ended her moderately successful sitcom Cougar Town after six seasons, Courteney Cox isn’t resting on her TV laurels. The actress/producer is developing a new, single-camera series for Fox which places her in the role of a billionaire’s widow who inherits his charity and discovers that doing good isn’t all that glamorous.
According to Deadline Cox will be working with The Office producer/writer Robert Padnick and, in what sounds like an odd setup ABC studios will be the production company, though cross-network partnerships are more common than most of us probably realize. ABC Studios also produces The Amazing Race and Criminal Minds for CBS, Daredevil and Jessica Jones for Netflix, and Grandfathered for Fox. ABC Studios was the company behind Cougar Town.
Despite roles in the Scream movie series Cox has continued to have her strongest success on TV. Following the end of Friends in 2004 she starred on the two-season FX tabloid series Dirt. A three-episode arc on Scrubs led to a partnership with Scrubs writer Bill Lawrence, who was inspired to develop Cougar Town based on strong women like Cox and his wife, Town co-star Christa Miller. The series started well, with more than 11 million viewers for the premiere, but steadily declined to around 3.5 million viewers by the end of season 3. It was moved to TBS for seasons 4-6 and ended with just over 1 million viewers.
Cox may be mining her personal life for inspiration with this new series as she adapts to life as a single women and business owner (she is founder of Coquette Productions). She went through a high-profile divorce from actor David Arquette in 2013 and her engagement to musician Johnny McDaid ended in November 2015.
Padnick, despite writing credits on The Office, is a relative newcomer to television writing. His father however is Glenn Padnick, an executive at Castle Rock, the company behind When Harry Met Sally, The Green Mile, and Miss Congeniality. James Griffith (Black-ish) is set to direct the pilot.