Utah lawmakers are putting more chips on the table in the effort to keep the Sundance Film Festival from leaving the state.
A proposal to set aside $3.5 million from the state’s budget to the Sundance Film Festival was among a list of funding items released Friday by the Utah Legislature’s Executive Appropriations Committee.
That’s more than the $3 million Gov. Spencer Cox initially announced in his budget proposal, released in January, before the legislative session started.
“I want Sundance to stay,” Senate President Stuart Adams told media members Monday. “I don’t think they’ll have the same notoriety if they leave Utah. With what we’ve done at Park City, and the events that they’ve had here, I think they’d make a big mistake by moving or leaving. But that’s up to them.”
Virginia Pearce — the director of the Utah Film Commission, which has been leading Utah’s bid effort — said Monday in a statement Monday that “from the start of this [bidding] process, the state has been dedicated to keeping the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, its original home.”
“This investment reaffirms that commitment and underscores the festival’s vital role in our creative economy,” she said.
The increase puts Utah’s bid closer to what one rival, Colorado, is offering if the festival relocates to Boulder. The Colorado Sun reported in January that the Colorado Legislature is considering an offer of $34 million in tax incentives over 10 years to “any qualifying global film festival entity” that would move to Colorado.
The Colorado plan is front-loaded, offering $4 million in incentives in 2027, another $4 million in 2028, $5 million in 2029, and $3 million a year from 2030 to 2036. Two committees in the Colorado House have approved the bill.
Cincinnati, Ohio, is also seeking to become the Sundance Film Festival’s new home starting in 2027. The third finalist is Utah, which would host Sundance primarily in Salt Lake City but with a few events remaining in Park City — which has been the festival’s home since January 1981, before actor-filmmaker Robert Redford started the nonprofit Sundance Institute later that year.
Sundance officials have stayed quiet about the relocation — with some saying as recently as last week that the board was still considering its choice. An announcement is expected in late March or early April.
The institute announced last year that it would start the bidding process to consider a new location for the festival once Sundance’s Park City contract expires at the end of the 2026 event. The move was prompted by concerns that Park City has become too expensive and inaccessible to the independent filmmakers showing their work to festival audiences and Hollywood buyers.
The 2026 festival — the last to be held primarily in Park City — is scheduled to run Jan. 22 to Feb. 1 of next year.
The Sundance Film Festival is an economic driver for the state. According to an economic impact study the Sundance Institute commissioned last year, the 2024 festival added $132 million to the state’s gross domestic product, and some $13.8 million in state and local tax revenue. Nearly 73,000 people attended the 2024 festival, the study said, with about a third coming from outside Utah.
Sundance’s possible relocation was the talk of this year’s festival among locals and visitors. Some expressed concerns about the cost of lodging and whether Park City was too small to accommodate everyone, while others talked about how magical the place is — and, as one veteran filmmaker said, how Sundance is “so emotionally connected to Park City.”
(George Pimentel | Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival) Actor Bowen Yang attends the premiere of "The Wedding Banquet," an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, at the Eccles Theatre in Park City on Monday, Jan. 27, 2025.
During the festival, locals displayed stickers that read “Keep Sundance in Utah” and “NOhio for Sundance.” The day after the festival ended, an open letter to “the Sundance community” supporting the Utah bid — signed by Cox and more than 90 government, civic and business leaders in the state — was printed in a half-page ad in the Los Angeles Times, the movie industry’s hometown newspaper.
Bowen Yang, the “Saturday Night Live” star whose comedy “The Wedding Banquet” premiered at this year’s festival, said on his “Los Culturistas” podcast that he would prefer Sundance go to Salt Lake City, which has “a little more infrastructure to support the size, the scale of the festival. And you just hop in a car and go to the ski lift and walk around Park City.”
On the other hand, veteran indie producer Christine Vachon — who has visited Park City for the festival many times — told The Hollywood Reporter last week that her preference is Cincinnati. “It has all of the trappings of an art and creative hub,” Vachon said. “It’s a very creative place with some interesting neighborhoods. It has the space for the festival. It has the infrastructure.”
