There is a quiet irony unfolding across Australian movie theatres right now.

If you've been to your local cinema lately, you've probably noticed the crowds. You've felt that familiar, undeniable magic of sitting in a dark room with your neighbours, sharing laughs, gasps and popcorn as the lights dim.

The Australian box office has been booming, topping $100 million for five consecutive months, including a record May and a record August. Australians are going to the movies again in droves.

The businesses are viable, the audiences are strong and the passion for screen stories is as high as it has ever been.

Yet behind the screen, a major equipment bill is on its way. And if we do not act soon, a million regional Aussies - one in nine people living outside our capital cities - could lose their local cinema altogether.

To understand how an industry that is finally fighting its way back from the challenges of COVID-19 shutdowns and Hollywood strikes can find itself facing another cliffhanger plot twist, you have to look behind the projection booth wall.

Independent Cinemas Australia (ICA) estimates that $85.4 million worth of digital projection equipment needs to be replaced across 243 independent cinemas and 854 screens nationwide.

This isn't a problem that's 10 years down the track. The replacement cycle is here. Cinemas are replacing projectors now, and many more will need to do so in the next few years.

Why is this all hitting at once? The reason so much equipment needs replacing at the same time goes back to Australia's rapid conversion from 35mm film to digital cinema more than a decade ago.

Back then, Hollywood studios wanted the change because distributing movies digitally was much cheaper than manufacturing and transporting thousands of physical film prints.

Through a system known as the Virtual Print Fee, or VPF, some of those savings were used to help cinemas pay for their first digital projectors.

It worked. Australia converted rapidly, which meant a large part of the country's projection equipment was installed within a short period of time.

But now that equipment is reaching replacement age, and it is happening at around the same time.

The original funding system was a one-off, leaving cinemas to finance the next generation of equipment on their own.

If you live in a major capital city, an ageing projector might sound like a minor inconvenience for a business owner. In a capital city, if one cinema disappears there is usually another one reasonably close by.

In regional Australia, the local cinema can be the only cinema for a very........

© Canberra Times