Hollywood turns gaze to Estes Park for Sundance Directors Lab at Stanley Hotel

ESTES PARK — For the first time, the Sundance Institute is taking its Directors Lab program on the road.

Held annually for the last four-plus decades at the Sundance Resort in Utah, the nonprofit global arts organization’s signature event will take place May 7 through May 22 at the iconic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park.

During the Directors Lab, which will be led by artistic director Gyula Gazdag, “filmmakers will rehearse, shoot, and edit selected scenes from their work-in-progress original screenplays in a workshop environment with support from experienced creative advisors,” according to Sundance. “Directors focus on core elements of filmmaking, including directing actors, workshopping their scripts, and defining their visual language.”

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The 2024 Sundance Directors Lab adviser cohort includes Miguel Arteta, Joan Darling, Rick Famuyiwa, Stephen Goldblatt, Keith Gordon, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Andrew Haigh, Randa Haines, Ed Harris, Siân Heder, André Holland, Karyn Kusama, Pam Martin, Estes Tarver and Dylan Tichenor.

The event was brought to Colorado with support from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, leaders of which have said that hosting such an event will boost the Centennial State’s profile in the entertainment industry. 

The Stanley Hotel is a fitting location for a high-profile Hollywood gathering, as the 116-year-old, 140-room hotel served as inspiration for Stephen King’s “The Shining” novel, which became a horror-genre classic when it was adapted for the silver screen by director Stanley Kubrick.

Over the past few months, the Stanley has been at the center of another drama — this one without the spectral presence of Jack Nicholson, blood-soaked elevators or creepy twins — as its longtime owner Grand Heritage Hotel Group has jockeyed to sell the hotel property, while positioning the Stanley to garner state investment to help complete the long-awaited Stanley Film Center. 

Members of the Colorado Economic Development Commission gave their unanimous blessing in April to a plan that is expected to allow the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority to step in and facilitate a previously approved — and now amended — plan that would see the Stanley sold and an expansion project funded. 

The sale, according to state officials, would unlock millions of public dollars needed to expand the hotel and build out The Stanley Film Center, which, according to its website “will be the permanent home for film, fun and the horror genre” and will highlight the key role that Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” film adaption has played in horror history.

Arizona-based Community Finance Corp., a nonprofit group that specializes in forming public-private partnerships that provide alternatives to the traditional funding schemes governments often use to pay for capital improvements and infrastructure projects, was previously in line to buy the Stanley — through a fairly complex financing mechanism — from Grand Heritage by way of a $475 million bond issuance from CECFA.

Under that deal structure, CFC was set to serve as “the temporary custodian of the Stanley Hotel and Film Center,” Colorado Office of Economic Development and International trade deputy director Jeff Kraft told the EDC in April.  

The updated deal structure “allows the entity that’s going to issue the bond, CECFA, to also be the near-term owner of the project,” he said. “CECFA was always going to be the long-term owner once the bonds were paid off. …This is a streamlining and simplification of the ownership structure.”

If the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority’s new plan comes to fruition, the authority will own the Stanley upon repayment of the bonds — still expected to total more than $400 million — and revenues from the property will flow back into the coffers at CECFA, which, according to its website, “is the official state issuer of tax-exempt bonds for capital projects furthering the missions of educational and cultural organizations.”

Kraft said last month that the CECFA is “going to use the profits that the hotel generates from operations after the bonds are paid off for philanthropic purposes in Colorado.”

CECFA is now seeking permission from Colorado lawmakers to expand its operational mandate to include certain new functions it would take on as the owner of the Stanley. Those permissions have been tacked on to an amendment to HB24-1295, which is making its way through the Colorado Legislature’s committee review process in advance of a vote that’s expected to be taken prior to the governing body’s adjournment next week. 

State officials and Grand Heritage Hotel Group owner John Cullen, whose company is expected to continue operating the hotel upon the state’s acquisition, have said repeatedly in recent months that a sale of the Stanley is necessary to fund important improvements such as the completion of The Stanley Film Center.

The estimated $70 million dollar effort began in 2015 with a jumpstart in the form of millions of dollars in state tourism tax incentives. Development of the museum and interactive film center, which has received several more public financing boosts over the years, has been hampered by construction delays, cost increases and the COVID-19 pandemic, which essentially shut down the hospitality industry for several months in 2020.  

Once complete, the Stanley Film Center will be “a two-story building with approximately 64,735 square feet, to include an approximately 864-seat outdoor amphitheater with a fire capacity of 1,200 (including standing room-only), an event center, a film museum, a sound stage, and related amenities, to be constructed adjacent to the main hotel building and connected to the concert hall,” according to a state documents. 

Blumhouse Productions LLC, the juggernaut production company behind horror films and franchises such as Get Out, Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Purge and Paranormal Activity, will serve as the film center’s exclusive exhibit curator.

The bond issuance and sale of the Stanley property to the state “is intended to facilitate the up to $46,399,582 in state sales tax increment financing over 30 years approved by the EDC under the Regional Tourism Act” to help get the Stanley improvement projects across the finish line, an OEDIT spokesperson told BizWest in an email last month.

Improvements at the hotel, state and Stanley officials have said, are expected to help the hotel draw more events like the Sundance Institute’s Directors Lab.

“The Stanley is very pleased to continue its long tradition of supporting the arts and honored to have Sundance and all of their creative partners here,” Cullen said in a statement last year when Sundance announced that the Directors Lab was heading to Estes Park. “I look forward to hosting and seeing what happens when hundreds of such talented people come together to the Colorado mountains to share their skills and experiences in such a collaborative environment.”