Utah’s Hopes Of Keeping Sundance Threatened By Anti-Pride Flag Bill On Governor’s Desk

EXCLUSIVE: By the end of April, the new home of the Sundance Film Festival should be public knowledge with the Salt Lake City/Park City combo, Boulder, Colorado or Cincinnati bid picked as the host for the next decade. However, a bill heading toward Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s desk that would ban the Pride flag in schools and other state government buildings might be an eleventh-hour obstacle to the Beehive State’s hopes of keeping the Robert Redford-founded shindig past 2026.

“What are they thinking?” a Sundance insider said late Tuesday of the bill to ban the LGBTQ+ flag after a virtual meeting between united Utah leaders and members of the festival’s selection committee. “Utah is Utah, but this goes to the heart of the community Sundance has worked years and years to develop.”

“It is a terrible law, a terrible look for the state,” the insider added of the Republican legislation that was passed by the state Senate on a 21-8 vote last week. “No matter what they say, we all know who it’s aimed at — the LGBTQ+ community, and that’s unacceptable.”

Having put forward a pitch to shift the focus of Sundance from its longtime base of Park City to Salt Lake City starting in 2027, the Utah bid is led by Gov. Cox, with SLC and Park City mayors onboard along with regional business and civic leaders. The festival’s current decade-long contract with Park City expires after Sundance 2026. Even before Sundance made it public in April that it would take bids for a new home, almost everyone acknowledged something had to change after 40 years in the once-sleepy resort town. While broad questions of Sundance’s future in a fast-changing media environment and the finances of the festival certainly loom large in the search for a new home, Utah has been a homecourt front-runner in the drawn-out selection process since it was announced almost a year ago…