Sundance chooses Boulder to host film festival

BOULDER — Beginning in 2027, Boulder will spend a week each winter as the epicenter of the cinematic universe. The Sundance Film Festival on Thursday selected the city as its new host for a decade.

“Having the Sundance Film Festival reside in Boulder is going to put Boulder on the international cultural map,” Boulder Chamber CEO John Tayer told BizWest.

Boulder beat out Sundance’s long-time home of Park City, Utah, as well as Cincinnati — the two other finalists — for the right to host the world-renowned festival founded more than four decades ago by Hollywood icon Robert Redford.

“Boulder offers small-town charm with an engaged community, distinctive natural beauty, and a vibrant arts scene, making it the ideal location for the Festival to grow,” the Sundance Institute, the nonprofit organization that organizes the festival, said Thursday in a prepared statement.

While the institute’s board of directors declared Boulder its next host city on Thursday, Boulder’s momentum had been building in recent weeks.

Variety, one of the entertainment industry’s premier publications, ran a piece this week suggesting that some Hollywood insiders who attended this year’s Sundance festival in Utah balked at the idea of Cincinnati becoming the event’s new home.

“I hate to say it, but there’s just nothing sexy about Cincinnati,” an unidentified publicist told Variety editor William Earl. “J.Lo isn’t going to play a secret party in Ohio. Is there a scene out there? Are there film lovers there? People don’t want to be honest about this, but there’s an exclusivity to Park City, and just nothing seems cool about Cincinnati.”

In the hours leading up to Thursday’s announcement, it became a two-horse race between Boulder and Park City after Film Cincinnati CEO Kristen Schlotman told news outlets in Ohio that Cincinnati was out of the running.

“This decision was informed by a detailed evaluation of the key components essential to creating our Festival. During the process, it became clear that Boulder is the ideal location in which to build our Festival’s future, marking a key strategic step in its natural evolution,” Sundance Institute board chair Ebs Burnough said in a statement. “We have a profound appreciation for the finalist cities and their communities — including Boulder, Colorado, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Salt Lake City, Utah — who presented overwhelmingly strong proposals and dedicated their time, passion, and commitment every step of the way. We have deep respect and gratitude to these communities for their hard work and partnership throughout the past year. Additionally, we sincerely value the steadfast support from our staff and board as we have ventured on this exploration together.” 

Winning the festival was a group effort, business and government leaders in Boulder and beyond have said. 

“The pursuit of this bid to win the opportunity to host the Sundance Film Festival has been a collaborative effort at the state, regional and local level from the very outset,” Tayer said, “and that shows the character of Colorado’s approach to economic development.”

Among the parties that last year helped submit a response to a request for proposal, or RFP, to Sundance on behalf of Boulder are the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, the Colorado Office of Film Television and Media, the Boulder Chamber, the city, the University of Colorado, the Boulder Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Stanley Film Center at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park.

The Colorado recruitment effort included a package of tax incentives designed to tip the scales in Boulder’s favor.

In support of the Boulder RFP, the Colorado Economic Development Commission last year approved $1.5 million in state incentives from the EDC’s strategic fund to help lure the festival.

House Bill 25-1005, which was introduced early in the 2025 Colorado legislative session and is expected to eventually pass, provides a framework for the Sundance organizers to receive tax breaks worth as much as $34 million over 10 years.

The Sundance Film Festival, which has been hosted by Redford and the Sundance Institute every winter in Park City since the late 1970s, brings together thousands of film lovers, filmmakers and celebrities to celebrate cinema and uplift artists.

Redford is no stranger to Boulder, having attended the University of Colorado for a year in the 1950s, during which he worked as a janitor at The Sink, an iconic restaurant in Boulder’s University Hill district. His son Jamie and daughter Shauna both graduated from CU, from which Redford received an honorary degree in 1987.

“This move will ensure that the Festival continues its work of risk taking, supporting innovative storytellers, fostering independence, and entertaining and enlightening audiences,” Redford said in a statement. “I am grateful to the Boulder community for its support, and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for the Festival there.”

The 2023 Sundance Film Festival contributed more than $118 million to Utah’s economy, brought in more than 21,000 out-of-state visitors and created 1,608 jobs that paid Utah workers $63 million in wages, according to OEDIT.

“We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in annual economic impact for Boulder and the state of Colorado from this festival,” Tayer said. “And that economic infusion comes at a time (during the winter) that is traditionally a down period for out-of-state visitation.”

Beyond the economic boost, hosting Sundance is expected to heighten Colorado’s profile within the entertainment industry.

The Sundance Institute got a taste of what Colorado has to offer last May, when the Stanley hosted the Sundance Directors Lab program.

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

The Stanley’s ownership group and Colorado officials have for months been engaged in a complicated transaction that, when complete, is expected to allow a state agency to take over the property and facilitate the completion of the long-planned but notoriously stubborn-to-build Stanley Film Center, which will celebrate the horror genre and could host future Sundance events.

Once complete, the 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), 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 state documents. The project also includes the addition of “more guest rooms and building a new guest entrance to take in more guests and further support the success of the film center.”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.

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