The first-ever Hot Pilot Party at the Banff World Media Festival will see Taye Diggs, Jennifer Whalen, Dani Kind, Praneet Akilla and Cody Lightning do a live staged reading of Andrew De Angelis half hour comedy New Spanish.

The table read will see Banff organizers team up with Hot Pilot Party creators Nadine Bhabha, Julian De Zotti, and Hannah Antaki to bring the event to the Canadian Rockies on June 8.

New Spanish, which was chosen from among 400 script submissions to the Hot Pilot Party, has a politically-charged plot in a post-Trump era where a small town Ontario is looking to secede from Canada. The live script read in Banff keeps pace with the festivals traditional market role of helping hothouse TV series in development, rather than see the selling of finished product as at the two MIPs in Cannes. Banff is packed with world-class programming, so to have a live table read of an available spec is a bold and fun way to kick off this years festival, Pam Silverstein, head of programming, said in a statement on Tuesday. Banff is where television gets made and celebrated its where the industry comes together to spark ideas, close deals, and spotlight incredible talent. Thats exactly what we intend to do with this session, she added.

Four additional scripts will be highlighted at Hot Pilot Party event: Spin by Allana Reoch, Hostel California by Rob Michaels, Crushing by Michael Ayers and Over Asking by Larissa Primeau, with the writers on hand in Banff.

The 2025 edition of the Banff World Media Festival is set to run June 8 to 11 in Alberta.