It’s Boulder! Sundance Exits Utah For 2027 Move To Blue State Colorado

deadline.com:

After over 40 years, the Sundance Film Festival is leaving Park City for a new and lucrative home in Boulder, Colorado As Deadline has been telling you for months, the Rocky Mountain metropolis has been in pole position over the United Utah bid and the efforts of Cincinnati, Ohio since the Robert Redford founded cinema celebration revealed the trio of finalists last September.

Coming out of two consecutive years of Sundance being canceled for in-person screenings due to the pandemic, an overwhelmed Park City, seismic shifts in the industry, and Sundance Institute executive musical chairs, the festival was looking for dramatic reset with a new location, as Deadline exclusively reported in July 2023.

To that, the official unveiling in April last year that Sundance was taking bids from contenders across the nation was an inevitability — as, in many ways, was the selection of Boulder. “Part of the decision-making process was around opportunity for growth,” bluntly said Acting Sundance Institute CEO Amanda Kelso to Deadline today. “That is also an important factor for us.

Knowing that we can be in a town that has 100,000 people means that it has more venues, more spaces, and more opportunities in how we can be expansive of the festival moving forward.”  Thursday’s announcement is in accordance with the final decision timeline festival director Eugene Hernandez told Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr.