With this year's Sundance Film Festival winding down on Saturday, Robert Redford says his next project is A Walk in the Woods.

Redford says he will adapt Bill Bryson's 1998 book about hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Robert Redford, shown at the opening news conference for the Sundance Film Festival, says themes for his future movies include hiking the Appalachian trail, and how Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in baseball.
(Peter Kramer/Associated Press)

Bryson gives a humorous chronicle of two out-of-shape, middle-aged Americans — himself and a college buddy — hiking the mountainous trail in A Walk in The Woods.

Redford will star as Bryson and produce the film. Barry Levinson is expected to direct.

"It'll be fun," Redford said, adding that he laughed out loud while reading the book.

"The backdrop is pretty terrific if you stop to think of all the visuals that are possible as they go along that trail."

The Appalachian Trail extends more than 3,200 kilometres from Georgia to Maine.

After that, Redford said he'll tackle the "inside, down-to-the mats story" of how Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey helped Jackie Robinson break the colour barrier in major-league baseball.

No title was given for that film, set in 1947 Brooklyn and Kansas City.

"What Rickey had to do, what Robinson had to go through and the partnership they had to form, that's a story nobody knows," Redford said. "It's just a fascinating story."

Redford said he saw only a handful of films during the festival in Park City, Utah, including  U2 3D, In Bruges and What Just Happened?

There were more new filmmakers at the festival this year than ever before, he said.

"Crossover" movies also have grown in prominence. 

"You're seeing music in film, you're seeing poetry in film, you're seeing animation," he said in an interview from Park City.

He reiterated concern that the festival is being judged not by its films, but by peripheral activities, such as market of clothing and perfume and celebrity watching.

"I don't have any problem with a large part of this. It's just once some of the media began to focus on the other part, and then judge us by that, then that got frustrating."