EXCLUSIVE: By the tip of April, the brand new dwelling of the Sundance Movie Competition must be public information with the Salt Lake Metropolis/Park Metropolis combo, Boulder, Colorado, or Cincinnati, Ohio bid picked because the host for the following decade. Nevertheless, a invoice heading in the direction of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s desk that will ban the Pleasure flag in faculties and different state authorities buildings could also be proving an eleventh hour impediment to the Beehive State’s hopes of maintaining the Robert Redford based shindig previous 2026.
“What are they pondering?” a Sundance insider mentioned late Tuesday of the LGBTQ+ flag banning invoice after a digital assembly between united Utah leaders and the competition’s relocation committee. “Utah is Utah, however this goes to the guts of the neighborhood Sundance has labored years and years to develop.”
“It’s a horrible legislation, a horrible search for the state,” the insider added of the Republican laws that was handed by the state Senate 21-8 on March 6. “It doesn’t matter what they are saying, everyone knows who it’s geared toward, the LGBTQ+ neighborhood and that’s unacceptable.”
Having put ahead a pitch to shift the main focus of Sundance from its longtime base of Park Metropolis to Salt Lake Metropolis beginning in 2027, the Utah bid is lead by Gov. Cox, with SLC and PC Mayors onboard amongst different regional enterprise and civic leaders. The competition’s present decade lengthy contract with Park Metropolis expires after Sundance 2026. Even earlier than Sundance made it public final April that it could take bids for a brand new dwelling, virtually everybody acknowledged one thing needed to change after 40 years within the as soon as sleepy resort city. Whereas broad questions of Sundance’s future in a fast-changing media setting and the funds of the competition definitely loom massive within the seek for a brand new dwelling, Utah has been a homecourt frontrunner within the drawn-out choice course of because it was first introduced virtually a yr in the past.
In latest weeks, realizing that nothing says I really like you want chilly onerous money, Gov. Cox has shifted techniques and moved to make sure $3 million for Sundance on this yr’s state price range.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox takes a selfie with Tennessee Gov. Invoice Lee, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp at Donald Trump’s second Inauguration. (Getty Pictures)
Regardless of that, the chance Cox will signal the anti-Pleasure flag invoice quickly has precipitated pink state Utah to search out itself at deep odds with Sundance’s expressed values of a “vibrant, inviting, and inclusive Competition.”
With blue state Boulder rising up to now three months because the one to beat among the many three finalists, a part of the raison d’être of the March 11 digital assembly between Utah and Sundance principals was to extend a comeback momentum for the state. At one level, in response to these taking part on the assembly, a Pleasure rainbow flag was unfurled at one level by a neighborhood politician. That apart, the latest passage of the anti-Pleasure invoice, which a number of Utah and SLC sources contend is aimed to punish the comparatively progress most populous metropolis within the state, has precipitated “concern” and “slowed” that momentum, I’m informed.
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Handed within the final days of the present Utah legislative session, the Rep. Trevor Lee and Sen. Daniel McCay sponsored HB77, or the Flag Show Amendments, will solely enable “the show of sure flags on authorities property.”
At one level seeming to permit the Nazi flag and the Accomplice flag in historical past class till that loophole was shut, the invoice now permits, with just a few exceptions, simply the U.S. flag, the state flag, Olympic flags, army flags, and the flags of universities and schools to be flown or put up. Whereas not stopping people from waving the multi-colored Pleasure flag at parades, protests and extra or carrying the image, HB77, if it turns into legislation, would cease the Pleasure flag and all different non-sanctioned flags from flying from and inside metropolis, state and different public buildings throughout such parades and celebrations or some other time.
Blasted by the ACLU and Equality Utah, who termed the measure a “blatantly unconstitutional invoice,” the success of HB77 comes now after two earlier makes an attempt failed. “What’s the distinction?” the competition insider asks rhetorically of the invoice’s passage this time. “Trump’s again within the White Home, attacking Trans rights, LGBTQ+ rights, erasing them.”
Together with Park Metropolis Mayor Nann Worel, Salt Lake Metropolis Mayor Erin Mendenhall was one of many contributors in that distant assembly between Sundance and Utah officers Tuesday.
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“There’s not a state on this nation the place inclusivity, variety and empathy aren’t beneath assault, and everybody has a job in standing up for these values, the Mayor mentioned to Deadline in the present day. “Salt Lake Metropolis won’t ever cease supporting our neighbors, together with the LGBTQIA neighborhood, and Sundance is an unimaginable companion in that assist. The ability of amplifying voices and creating change via artwork is required now greater than ever on this ongoing work.”
Neither the Governor’s workplace nor Sundance itself responded to request from Deadline for touch upon HB77 and Utah’s multi-pronged bid for the competition.
Nevertheless, Rep. Lee, one of many sponsors of the invoice, informed Deadline Wednesday that “we’re ensuring that flags being displayed on authorities property are politically impartial” with HB77. “By no means,” the primary time period consultant from the state’s 16th district added when requested if he thought the invoice might harm Utah’s probabilities of maintaining Sundance.
Lee, who was a giant backer of the profitable effort to ban fluoride from the ingesting water in Utah, on March 6 reposted a tweet that was stuffed with reward for him on the flag laws. Nothing new there for anybody on-line, conservative politician and in any other case, to do. Nevertheless, the tweet additionally claimed that the Pleasure and Black Lives Matter flags are “Marxist,” and a part of the “faith” of “wokeism” being pressured on youngsters within the state.
With thousands and thousands in assist, tax breaks and extra being provided by the trio of Sundance finalists to snag the competition, Utah might take a big hit if it misplaced the annual occasion and its varied year-round labs.
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The latest information ready for the competition by Y 2 Analytics says that together with the status and two weeks within the worldwide media highlight, the 2024 Sundance Movie Competition introduced in $132 million for Utah in what is named “whole financial influence.” A part of that so-called influence is out of the 11-day 2024 fest was round 1,730 jobs for Utah residents and $13.8 million in native and state taxes.
Breaking the downward sample that quite a few home and worldwide festivals have suffered over the past 5 yr or so, Sundance 2024’s whole financial influence was up from the $118 million that the 2023 competition introduced in. Coming off the 2021 and 2022 Sundance Movie Festivals being shuttered for in-person attendance and screenings as a result of Covid pandemic, the 2023 competition raised $12.3 million taxes for the state and municipalities and created 1,608 jobs.
As for the place Sundance will find yourself subsequent. Competition director Eugene Hernandez mentioned this to Deadline Mike Fleming Jr late final month: “We’re nonetheless working via that course of. The parents from the finalist cities had been on the competition. We hope to have a call in place by finish of March of early April.”
Mark your calendars.
