Cole Webley, a Salt Lake City-based director, spent decades dreaming of premiering one of his films in Park City. The Utah native has attended the Sundance Film Festival for nearly 20 years, waiting in long lines as the snow fell around him, shivering in the cold in hopes of catching a hot new movie. He’d also tried and failed to get five of his short films into competition.
“To say that I had an affinity towards the festival would be an understatement,” Webley says. “It’s been the pinnacle of what I had hoped to achieve.”
This year, Webley finally gets his wish. “Omaha,” a drama about a struggling father embarking on a cross-country trip with his two daughters, will debut on the first day of Sundance. The inclusion of “Omaha” is meaningful to him in other ways. The film was largely shot around Utah with a local crew, so there’s a strong regional connection between the movie and the place where it will first be seen. But even as Webley prepares to welcome an influx of friends and family staying with him during the two-week showcase of indie films, he’s also grappling with the prospect that Sundance may soon be leaving the state it has called home for nearly half a century.
“It’ll be devastating for Utah,” Webley predicts. “The Utah Film Commission would be remiss to let this go. Once it’s gone, it’s not coming back.”
But Sundance may already be thinking about renting a U-Haul. In 2024, the festival announced that it was considering uprooting for another state once its contract with Park City expires in 2027. That would leave 2025 as the penultimate edition in Utah. Last fall, Sundance said its landing spot would be determined from three finalists.
Salt Lake City is among them, but if it’s selected, Sundance will have barely any presence in Park City, having outgrown the small ski resort. Insiders have been signaling that one of the other two finalists, Boulder and Cincinnati, is more likely to emerge with the winning bid. The potential change of address has left many filmmakers, agents and studio executives wondering what the move will mean for Sundance’s identity. After all, so much of the Sundance experience is shaped by its cozy small-town setting.
Lawrence Inglee, a producer who has debuted five movies at Sundance, including “The Messenger,” an Oscar-nominated war drama, and “Swiss Army Man,” which marked the feature debuts of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, says the celebration of art-house cinema has become synonymous with the thin mountain air and snowy peaks of Park City.
Wyatt Solis and Molly Belle Wright in Cole Webley’s “Omaha,” which will be showcased at Sundance this month.
“It’s hard to imagine them being separated,” he says. “Everything about the experience — the wintery isolation, stomping through the icy streets with the mountains in the distance — is so integrated into what makes it so special. It’s hard to think of another place that can evoke those things.”
But others believe that having Sundance in Park City is no longer sustainable. The town, once a sleepy getaway, has become a vacation destination for multimillionaires who don’t want the traffic or the tourists and looky-loos the festival attracts. And the cost of housing studio executives, journalists and even the filmmakers has become inordinately expensive. Hotel rooms in Park City can top $2,000 a night during the height of Sundance. Even the festival, which gets deals because of its association with the town, must pay $800 a night on average to accommodate its workers. Price has become a barrier for aspiring directors and cinema lovers who hope to experience Sundance’s rebel spirit.
“The younger generation, those alternative voices that made Sundance what it is, can’t afford to stay there,” says Tom Bernard, co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics. “They have priced their audience out of town. And we’re looking at our own budget and making tough decisions about how many people we can send. It’s time to move somewhere more accessible.”
Some festival regulars feel that Sundance has become commodified, and that it’s a symptom of being in the same location for 50 years. What Robert Redford started in 1978 as something edgy and offbeat changed as carmakers, fashion labels and credit card companies threw parties and set up gifting suites around town that were more interested in attracting movie stars than supporting moviemaking.
“Sundance used to have such an artful pulse on the street that went beyond the films. Now it all seems to be gone and replaced with police presence and regulations,” says Jenifer Sutherland, owner of the local smoothie bar Land Juicery. “It’s happened due to Sundance having been here for so long. If it stays, it needs a revival.”
Just as Sundance has suffered setbacks from COVID and the loss of Redford as the face of the festival (now 88, he’s scaled back his involvement since 2020), so too has the independent film business. It’s been a tumultuous time for art-house cinema, which has failed to regain its pre-pandemic strength as streaming services have surged in popularity and movie theaters have struggled to draw audiences. Netflix, Apple and other deep-pocketed companies are still willing to shell out top dollar for a handful of films that premiere at the festival, but most movies search for distribution months, even years, after Sundance ends. And indie studios, which rely on cinemas to make money, are seeing their profit margins tighten as they wait for a resurgence in moviegoing that may never come.
“I’d be lying if I said I think this is the strongest moment in indie film history,” says Bleecker Street president Kent Sanderson. “It’s been a relitively slow market. There are films out of Toronto that haven’t sold. There are fewer domestic buyers and less activity out of streamers.”
John Sloss, the founder of Cinetic Media, has been attending Sundance for decades, using it to showcase movies he’s produced or packaged such as “Boyhood” and “Napoleon Dynamite.” Like Bernard, he believes Sundance owes it to itself to get the best deal it can from its next home in the form of subsidies or tax breaks. He’s not worried about the festival’s appeal suffering if it decamps from Utah.
“Sundance’s specialness comes from being a place for discovery,” Sloss says. “It’s the preeminent American film festival, and that isn’t rooted to a place. That’s due to a group of people and an ethos. Sundance can be anywhere, and people will show up.”
One of the people who have returned to Sundance dozens of times is producer Erik Feig. He’s premiered and sold movies like 2022’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” and 2023’s “Theater Camp” in recent years, and has come to believe that having the gathering in a more compact setting makes it easier to navigate than North American festivals like South by Southwest or Toronto that take place in sprawling cities.
“Park City brings a lot of value, and I’m dreading the idea of it moving,” says Feig, who will be back this year with horror thriller “Together,” starring Dave Franco and Alison Brie. “You’re not in a big city like Toronto, so having the one Main Street and walking up and down that hill is a bonding experience. And having a few theaters that are close allows you to see things. There were so many times I watched eight movies a day. I can’t imagine I would be able to if I had to travel.”
The Egyptian Theatre, where many Sundance classics have hosted premieres, is one of those ubiquitous festival stops. “We’re like the Radio City Music Hall of Park City,” says Randy Barton, the nonprofit’s theater manager. “Our marquee is one of the most photographed, and we’re proud of that.”
He notes that many local businesses view the festival as a “cash cow,” though he’s not concerned about a potential move from a financial perspective.
“It would be a big blow to lose a major artist event, but the town and our theater will be fine,” Barton says. “We would just fill the weeks with other programming.”
Most of the Egyptian’s events are concerts, comedy shows and live theater. But Barton admits he’d miss the influx of film lovers.
“I’m onstage year-round introducing shows,” he says. “I’m always mentioning that we’ve been the home of the festival since 1981, and we hope to be the home of Sundance for the next 50 years. That always gets applause.”