For the latter, there was nowhere to go - no forward bookings to sell, no home delivery to pivot towards, no way to adapt or reinvent themselves.

Cinema owners were left with no option but to close up or bunker down and wait it out, peering into an unknown future.

Now, with a vaccine on our shores, restrictions loosened and cinemas allowed to hold 75 percent capacity, there is hope.

"We're swimming along just keeping our heads above water, trying to hang on until things get back to normal," said the manager of the Odeon movie complex, Helen McBurnie, who is waiting patiently for the Hollywood machine to return to full production capacity.

"We've been able to trade to some degree, but the distributors keep pushing movies further back, and further back," she said.

"We were all hoping April would be the kick off; when the [James] Bond movie got moved back to April it looked like there would be some normality, and we would move forward in normal trading from there, but now it's been moved back again."

The 25th Bond movie, No Time to Die, was initially slated for release in February 2020. The release date has been set back multiple times and is now in October.

The Odeon is part of Box Office Promotions, which owns cinemas in Tamworth and Wagga.

Mrs McBurnie said that the release of some "big titles" was being put on hold until the success of a vaccine roll out in the US could be gauged.

She described blockbusters as "extremely important".

"Boxing Day is traditionally the busiest day of the year and we had one blockbuster - Wonder Woman, so for us trade is well over halved, and we've struggled.

"If we don't have the product coming through people aren't going to come."

Mrs McBurnie said the dearth of Hollywood movies had created space for Australian films to find wider audiences, and that The Dry and Penguin Bloom in particular had been popular.

She said that JobKeeper payments had allowed the cinema to keep staff on the books.