Here’s what Park City and SLC are doing to keep Sundance in Utah

They came. They saw. They ate lunch.

A delegation from the Sundance Institute visited Salt Lake City and Park City this week, touring venues and hearing details of the bid Utah officials are making to keep the Sundance Film Festival in Utah in 2027 and beyond.

Officials including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson spoke to members of the institute’s search committee — a group that included festival director Eugene Hernandez, festival programming director Kim Yutani, senior programmer John Nein and institute board member Amy Redford — during the two-day tour.

Media were not invited to accompany the tour, but the Utah Film Commission provided photos and statements from Utah officials after it was completed.

Utah’s bid is based around the theme “Two Cities, One Experience,” highlighting both Park City — the festival’s main home since 1981, the same year actor-filmmaker Robert Redford founded Sundance Institute — and Salt Lake City, where the original Utah/US Film Festival started in 1978 and where about a third of Sundance’s screenings have been held in recent years.

The theme suggests that future festivals will be divided more evenly between Park City and Salt Lake City. Sundance Institute’s contract with Park City, which runs through the 2026 festival, stipulates that 70% of festival events must be held in the Summit County ski town.

In recent years, though, festival attendees — and, quietly, Sundance officials — have expressed concerns that Park City is becoming too expensive for independent filmmakers and younger audiences to attend.

Sundance Institute announced in April that, with its Park City contract up for renewal, the arts nonprofit would open a search for a permanent festival home starting in 2027. After a lengthy process, with cities seeking information about its needs and the institute making a request for proposals, the search committee in July announced six finalists: Atlanta; Boulder, Colo.; Cincinnati; Louisville, Ky.; Santa Fe, N.M.; and the combined Salt Lake City/Park City bid.

Some cities have sweetened the deal with promises of financial incentives. Colorado officials, in announcing Boulder’s bid, mentioned $1.5 million in incentives, while Atlanta’s bid included a promise of $2 million from Georgia government and private sources.

Utah’s bid, the Utah Film Commission announced in July, also “offers new ways to secure and expand upon” the approximately $4 million in financial assistance that government entities now give the festival, as well as the $2 million in cash and in-kind support from local, corporate, foundation and individual donors.

The commission has not said how much expansion of financial assistance Utah is willing to offer Sundance. The commission’s parent agency, the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, has declined The Salt Lake Tribune’s request for documents detailing the Sundance bid, saying disclosure of such information could jeopardize ongoing negotiations.

At stake is the future of one of Utah’s biggest cultural events, and a significant economic driver. According to an economic impact study commissioned by Sundance Institute after the 2020 festival — the last time before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the festival to go all-virtual for two years — the event added $167.5 million to the state’s gross domestic product, and $17.8 million in state and local tax revenue.

The tour through Salt Lake City took Sundance’s search team to the Gallivan Center, where a young woman re-created the dance from “Little Miss Sunshine.” The committee had lunch at Spy Hop, the youth media nonprofit. They heard two musicians busking songs from “Once,” a 2007 Sundance hit and an Oscar winner, outside the Eccles Theatre. And they saw actors perform as Napoleon and Pedro from “Napoleon Dynamite.” They also visited the Capitol Theatre, the Hyatt Regency, the restaurant Lake Effect and the nearly completed Asher Adams hotel in the Union Pacific depot.

“There are four things, when I say I’m from Utah, that people know about Utah,” Cox told a lunch audience during the tour, in a moment included in a Utah Film Commission sizzle reel. “One of them is the Utah Jazz. The second is, ‘I skied there once.’ The third is, ‘I love your national parks.’ And the fourth is Sundance.”

Sundance Institute has said it plans to announce the winning bidder in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2025. Industry observers have speculated that the announcement could come during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, still to be held in Park City and Salt Lake City, Jan. 23-Feb. 2.