Hours after the Sundance Institute announced it would move its world-famous film festival from Utah to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027, Sundance officials were in Colorado celebrating with the locals.
In Utah at that moment, those involved in the failed bid to retain the event Robert Redford got rolling more than 40 years ago were already talking about starting over — by creating a film festival of their own.
“We could develop [a festival] that would have immediate credibility, and continue on that tradition of independent films in Utah,” Scott Anderson, the retired CEO of Zions Bank and co-chair of the development committee that compiled Utah’s bid, said in an interview.
In the bid proposal the state submitted to Sundance, the Utah Legislature did its part — passing a $3.5 million payment to the Sundance Institute as part of next year’s state budget. Overall, the bid tallied some $12.2 million a year from state and local governments in cash and in-kind contributions that would go to keep Sundance in Utah.
After Sundance named Boulder as the festival’s home, with a 10-year commitment, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said the state would claw back that $3.5 million and steer it toward a film festival of its own.
A few weeks later, Cox told reporters at his monthly news conference that “the number of people in lots of different industries, in arts and entertainment, who are interested in doing something bigger here and better than Sundance is just off the charts. My phone hasn’t stopped ringing.”
Virginia Pearce, director of the Utah Film Commission and a leader in the bid effort, said losing the festival “presents a unique opportunity for Utah.”
“After talks with both government and private entities,” Pearce said in a statement, “we are all committed to thinking big.”
The commission plans roundtable discussions with Utah filmmakers, artists and organizations, Pearce said. “I am looking forward to those conversations,” she said, adding that the state will share details in the coming months.
[Related: A Sundance that might have been: What Utah leaders imagined for a Salt Lake City-based film festival]
Anderson said that with the money Utah was offering Sundance — besides the government funds, there were pledges from private sources in the millions — pivoting to a homegrown festival is doable.
“You could put on a really good festival for a lot cheaper,” Anderson said. Such a festival, he said, “could lean on” the nonprofit Utah Film Center for staff, along with volunteers from film departments at the University of Utah, Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University.
“You could have a broader genre of films, and I think that would attract film buyers and that would attract filmmakers,” Anderson said. “Our airport is so good, and we have the population and the venues and the volunteers and everything all set.”
Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, who also was involved in the bid effort, is less sure.
“I’m curious to see where the conversations go,” Wilson said. “I don’t think we should just get defensive and say, ‘We need a film festival.’”
Any festival that would start in Utah should be community-based, Wilson said, and with the right partners. Like Anderson, Wilson cited the Utah Film Center, which fosters such programming as the Utah Queer Film Festival and the Tumbleweeds Film Festival for Kids. Wilson also mentioned another nonprofit, the Salt Lake Film Society, which operates Broadway Centre Cinemas and owns the closed-for-renovation Tower Theatre.
Wilson, who worked for Redford’s Sundance Institute when it started in the early 1980s, said she has doubts about the viability of a new film festival.
“There’s not a marketplace like there once was,” Wilson said. “There aren’t that many windows for film festivals … between Berlin and Toronto and everything in between.”
(Al Hartmann | Tribune file photo) Utah filmmaker Trent Harris, the director of "Beaver Trilogy" and "Plan 10 From Outer Space," both of which screened at the Sundance Film Festival.
‘What is the brand?’
Trent Harris, the maverick Utah filmmaker who showed his movies “Plan 10 From Outer Space” (1995) and “Beaver Trilogy” (2001) at Sundance, said he’s skeptical of the idea of a new film festival in Utah.
Harris said there’s a glut of film festivals around the world. He cited the number 12,000, the number of festivals and screenplay competitions serviced by the film submission portal FilmFreeway.
“I guess you could have a regional film festival, but do we really need another regional film festival?” Harris said. “Are you going to compete with San Francisco or Seattle?”
Harris called it “preposterous thinking” on the part of Cox and others that Utah could create a festival on a level with Sundance — one of the “big five” international film festivals, along with Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Toronto.
“It’s sort of like saying, ‘I’m going to start a baseball team,’” Harris said, “‘and, by the end of the season, win the World Series.’”
If anyone could create such a festival, Harris said, it’s not Utah’s politicians and business leaders.
“They don’t know anything about art. They know even less about film, and absolutely nothing about film festivals,” Harris said. “I don’t even think they understand why Sundance was as prestigious as it was.”
Sundance didn’t happen overnight, said Harris, who watched the event grow from the fledgling Utah/U.S. Film Festival in Salt Lake City in 1978. Harris showed some of his early short films in those years and worked as a volunteer driver. (Harris once drove “Night of the Living Dead” director George A. Romero from the airport to Park City. Harris said Romero told him “there’s this thing coming that’s going to change everything”: home video.)
It was more than a decade, after a move to Park City and a rebrand to the U.S. Film Festival, before the festival made its reputation as a marketplace, Harris said. The turning point came in 1989, when Steven Soderbergh’s first movie, “sex, lies and videotape,” landed the festival’s first $1 million distribution deal.
“Suddenly,” Harris said, “the world saw Sundance much differently.”
From there, he said, the Sundance Film Festival grew into “a brand that people knew. Developing a brand takes a long time.”
Harris’ advice for anyone building a new film festival: “Be ready for the long haul. This isn’t going to work the first 10 years.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Robert Redford receives an award from Scott Anderson, President and CEO of Zions Bank, at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival Utah Women’s Leadership Celebration in Park City, Thursday, January 25, 2018.
Utah’s bid — and Boulder’s
In April 2024, the Sundance Institute started its selection process for a festival location. Its current contract with Park City was poised to end after the 2026 run. Wilson, Salt Lake County’s mayor, suspected something was amiss when Utah was invited to submit a bid along with everyone else.
Wilson said she proposed a summit between Sundance and Utah leaders to iron out the institute’s concerns before opening a bidding war. That proposal was never accepted, Wilson said. Instead, she wrote in an April 8 letter to the Los Angeles Times, that Sundance walked away from Utah.
It was clear, Anderson said, that Sundance “knew us better than others, and that created some baggage on both sides.”
Pearce, the film commission director, said she was “very proud of the work we put into the bid.”
“City, county and state entities worked on the proposal for over a year, which we felt addressed all of the concerns that the festival presented,” Pearce said. “The support and innovation from both the public and private sectors were inspiring. Ultimately, Sundance Institute decided to go in a different direction.”
Comparing Utah’s bid figures to Boulder’s is difficult. Visit Boulder, that city’s convention and visitors’ bureau, said it is bound by a confidentiality agreement with the Sundance Institute not to divulge the full details of its proposal.
Visit Boulder said it has pledged $2.5 million a year for 10 years in in-kind destination services and marketing support, along with $4 million in cash contributions to Sundance’s team “as they establish and operate the festival in Boulder.”
The Colorado Legislature approved a $34 million tax incentive plan, spread out over 10 years, for a global film festival to relocate in the state. Gov. Jared Polis signed that bill in early April. Sundance officials attended the signing ceremony.
That incentive averages to $3.4 million a year, roughly comparable to the $3.5 million the Utah Legislature put in its budget this year. It’s possible Utah lawmakers would have kept giving that much annually.
Colorado’s plan is front-loaded, giving Sundance $4 million in tax incentives each of the first two years, $5 million the third year, and $3 million a year for the next seven years.
A funding summary in Utah’s bid presentation said the Beehive State was pledging $2.9 million in new in-kind contributions, on top of the $3.7 million already going to Sundance — for an annual total of $6.65 million from in-kind support.
Utah’s bid summary estimated another $2.275 million a year in cash from state and local governments, in addition to the $2.755 million a year already being given, for a total of $5.53 million in cash a year.
The other part of Utah’s bid — which Anderson was working quietly to secure — was a list of pledges from private backers, corporations and foundations. According to the funding summary, Utah was pledging around $1.2 million in cash and $1.55 million from in-kind contributions each year via private sources. Anderson also had received pledges, totaling $10 million, for a cash payment to Sundance when it signed the 10-year contract to keep the festival in Utah.
Anderson would not disclose what companies and other private entities made those pledges but said they are names familiar to most people in Utah. A version of the bid presentation, released by the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity after a records request, also redacted those companies’ names.
Visit Boulder has not been involved in discussions about private donations to Sundance from Colorado businesses and foundations, a spokesperson said.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson gives her State of The County Address at the Clark Planetarium, on Tuesday, Feb 4, 2025.
How Utah lost Sundance
Sundance officials, when they announced the Boulder choice, said that Utah’s conservative political leanings were not a factor in their decision. The March 27 announcement from Sundance said that Boulder’s “welcoming environment aligns with the ethos the Sundance Film Festival developed in Park City.”
Wilson, in her letter to the Los Angeles Times, said “politics are not the real story. If they were, Redford would never have planted his vision in Utah to begin with. A progressive himself, Redford understood that impact happens when you speak truth in hard places — not when you run from them.”
The decision from Sundance officials, Wilson said in an interview, came because “they’re going to go where they’re more comfortable. But sometimes you want to be uncomfortable, to make a difference in a place and to truly have impact. Bob Redford understood that when he chose to locate Sundance, invest in our land, engage with the Utah community to get something really amazing.”
Anderson said he believes the institute’s trustees were concerned that the Utah Legislature’s appropriation of $3.5 million was only for one year.
“They looked at that and said, ‘This is attractive, but what’s the backup?’” Anderson said. “Without [a] guarantee, they were afraid that the state funding could be pulled or be used to censor them — and that hasn’t happened in 43 years.”
Anderson noted that Colorado’s 10-year incentive plan hadn’t cleared that state’s Legislature before Sundance announced it had chosen Boulder. And, he said, there’s nothing in Colorado’s plan to prevent future lawmakers from changing their minds.
“The Legislature has the power to say, ‘We’re going to take some of that money, and we’re going to put it over here, because there’s a greater need over here,’” Anderson said.
When asked for comment for this article, the Sundance Institute released this statement: “We deeply value our longstanding legacy in Utah. As Utah is where the Sundance Institute remains rooted, we continue to stay committed to supporting artists and audiences here through our year-round public and artist programs, such as our labs which we hope to continue at the Sundance Mountain Resort and upcoming summer programming for the local community. The recent decision pertains solely to the location of the Sundance Film Festival.”
The Sundance Mountain Resort, high up in Provo Canyon, has been the home of the Sundance Institute’s lab programs since the nonprofit was founded in 1981. This summer and last, as the resort has been undergoing renovation, the June directors’ lab has made a temporary home in Colorado — at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, the resort famously cited as Stephen King’s inspiration for the Overlook Hotel in “The Shining.”
(Utah Film Commission) A sign, noting the link between Salt Lake City and Park City, guides a delegation from Sundance Institute visiting Salt Lake City on Aug. 27, 2024. The visit was part of the bidding process for a relocation of the Sundance Film Festival — which ended when Sundance chose Boulder, Colorado, as the festival's new home starting in 2027.
‘Bad for Utah’ and ‘bad for Sundance’
Utah will miss the Sundance Film Festival, Anderson said, and not just for the economic boost. (In 2024, Sundance Institute‘s own economic impact report found that the festival pumped some $132 million into Utah’s economy.)
“Sundance gave the state sort of a halo, that it was cool and that it wasn’t weird, that you could come here with progressive ideas,” Anderson said. “We don’t get that with the Jazz or [the Utah Hockey Club] or the Tabernacle Choir.”
Conversely, Anderson said, “They’re going to miss us. There’s a better opportunity for them to develop audiences here than in Boulder. … I think the ticket holders, especially those coming in from outside, will miss the ability, the ease, with which you can ski, you can party, you can go to a movie.”
The festival leaving Utah, filmmaker Harris said, is “bad for Utah, and it’s bad for Sundance.”
Harris pointed out that the drive from Denver, Colorado’s biggest city, is 45 minutes from Boulder — about the same time it takes to drive from Salt Lake City to Park City. But Salt Lake City’s airport is a lot more convenient than Denver’s.
“Have you ever flown into Denver?” Harris asked in mock exasperation. “You realize the Denver airport is actually in Kansas?”
Anderson said that, even though Utah’s bid didn’t go the way he wanted, he’s “a big believer in what Robert Redford has created. … I love the Sundance Film Festival, I love the idea of the labs — and their concept of pushing independent films, and pushing films that address critical issues in our society.”
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