Why Sundance Is Getting By With Fewer Venues This Year

In a major change of pace, this year’s Sundance Film Festival will open with 19 films on its opening day, Thursday, January 18, including the first of the Shorts programs, all starting as early as noon Mountain Time. (In years past, a fraction of those films would start the event, kicking off in the evening.)

That’s a lot of movies, and it’s a reminder that for many industry folks this year, they can’t take that morning flight from Los Angeles into Salt Lake City on the first day and expect not to miss anything.

Because so many films are packed into that first day, the festival is also compressing all those movies, at least on the 18th, into a handful of Park City venues: the Eccles, the Egyptian, The Ray, the Library Center, and Prospector Square. Throughout the festival, attendees and press can also see movies at the Holiday Village Cinemas, the Redstone Cinemas multiplex outside of town, and The Park.

But in past years, the festival has made use of a few more venues around the Park City area, including the Park City Municipal Athletic & Recreation Center, better known as the racquetball court colloquially called the MARC, and the Temple, which is a synagogue also in Park City. A rep for the festival informs us those haven’t been in use since 2020, though this is only the second year in which Sundance is back in person.

Sundance also this year will no longer use the DoubleTree by Hilton, also known by its previous name The Yarrow, a hotel…