Sundance Institute just received one of the biggest gifts in its history — $3 million from a foundation headed by Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw.

The gift will help the institute’s Directors Lab return to its longtime home: the Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah’s Provo Canyon.

It’s part of a multiyear commitment from the couple’s Hearthland Foundation that will also support Sundance’s Feature Film Program, the institute announced Thursday.

The hope had long been that the lab would return to the Utah resort once its three-year commitment to The Stanley Hotel in Colorado ended in June, according to Michelle Satter, founding senior director of Sundance’s artist programs. The famous mountain hotel inspired Stephen King to write “The Shining.”

Satter emphasized that in January, as the institute’s Sundance Film Festival had its final run in Park City and Salt Lake City after four decades in Utah.

The institute announced in 2025 that the January festival would instead move to Boulder, Colorado, starting in 2027.

The gift “is a profound vote of confidence in independent artists and in the future of Sundance Institute,” institute CEO David Linde said in a statement Thursday.

Rachel Levin, the Hearthland Foundation’s president of philanthropy, said in a statement that Sundance’s Directors Lab has given “emerging artists the freedom to take risks, find their voices, and tell the stories only they can tell.”

She also said Spielberg and Capshaw “hope that this gift will encourage others to further support Sundance’s mission.”

In addition, Sundance’s announcement said the gift also will help fund fellowships and unrestricted grants to artists.