Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival is hatching a plan to expand to Brooklyn.
The annual Park City, Utah, indie-movie mammoth is in talks to create a large-scale New York festival, sources exclusively tell Page Six. We hear organizers are discussing plans with top Brooklyn real estate developers — as well as film industry insiders, politicos and retailers — to launch a Sundance initiative that would take place in DUMBO and could rival Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s annual Tribeca Film Festival.
According to a source, one space under the Brooklyn Bridge has already been scouted as a potential headquarters for the event. The festival has hosted a “Sundance Institute at BAM” screening series in Brooklyn since 2006.
The Sundance Brooklyn buzz arrives on the heels of the city’s October announcement of a Made in New York Media Center in DUMBO, backed by Mayor Bloomberg and designed to be a “Silicon Alley” incubator for advertising, film, media and video-game development. The Independent Filmmaker Project will manage the center at 20 Jay St., due to open this spring.
Sundance and the IFP are in “very early conversations” about doing a project together, an IFP rep said. Sources say the possibilities range from a screening series to a full-blown festival.
Sundance is about to kick off its main Utah event Thursday, with films starring Daniel Radcliffe, Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Shia LaBeouf and Amanda Seyfried.
Redford’s fest last year alone brought $80 million to Utah, and 46,000 attendees. It’s recently expanded with screening series in 10 cities, including its BAM program, which starts Jan. 31 with “Kill Your Darlings,” starring Radcliffe.
A Sundance rep said: “2013 will mark the fourth year of our Sundance Film Festival USA initiative, which brings films . . . to regional art-house theaters immediately following their premieres. We are pleased to have a presence in the New York area, and we continue to seek new programmatic opportunities in regions across the country and internationally.”