For businessman Michael Smith, predicting the death of cinema is a fool's game.
The owner of the Sun theatre in Yarraville remembers how the demise of movie-going had been heralded at the birth of TV, VHS, DVD and most recently, streaming technology.
"Streaming doesn't concern me at all. People will always want to go out and see a film. Most of us have a kitchen but we choose to go to restaurants occasionally, it's the same thing."
Smith has put his money behind that sentiment with the announcement of a new eight-screen cinema as part of a retail, housing, nursing home complex in the heart of Footscray last month.
It comes after Palace Cinemas announced a new 15-screen complex on the new Pentridge retail, accommodation and housing development site in Coburg.
For Footscray, the cinema is seen as good news. Locals interviewed by Fairfax Media said it would mean they would be happy not to have to travel to Highpoint shopping centre in Maribyrnong or Yarraville to see a movie.
Now in the throes of a property boom, the inner-western suburb used to be home to four cinemas: Barkly Cinema (now apartments), La Scala (now offices), The Old Grand and The Trocadero (now retail arcades). Now there are none there.
"The council was keen to see cinemas go into Footscray, they'd seen what a positive impact the Yarraville cinema had on the village and they were keen to do the same."
The new theatre will be co-programmed with the Yarraville Sun, which Smith says is constantly at capacity with no room to grow given the historical constraints of the building.
The apartment-tower laden Footscray of today needs recreational options close by, partly why Smith also plans to run an African Film Festival at the new theatre.
"We need to cater to what the local community needs."
But it's not just community-mindedness that has brought these cinemas to be.
At the gleaming new Pentridge and Footscray complexes of the future, the presence of an independent cinema is part of the property offering. It's a way to create community as medium-density living becomes a necessity.
"One of the things we're so pleased about, the developer, council and ourselves, is that the cinema would be part of a complex that would make that section of Albert Street a community space, an open space, with the benefits of all the cafes, shops that come with that."
However, apartment complex cinemas aren't the mass public cinemas of the 1980s. They have fewer, wider, plusher seats, they serve wine and coffee as well as popcorn.
The new Footscray cinema, for example, will have a range of theatre sizes but none bigger than 200 seats.
The fewer-patron, bigger-spend approach sits squarely with trends in the industry which focus on extracting more dollars from a population that goes to the movies less often.
A recent IBIS World report found that Village Roadshow have been able to outperform the industry by continuing rollout of Gold Class and Vmax cinemas and the introduction of the Vpremium concept in 2015.
Indeed, Screen Australian data shows an increase on the average price from 2005 ($9.94) to 2016 ($13.80) is about 39 per cent. The increase in the top price (from $15 to $25) is a staggering 67 per cent.
If as Michael Smith says, a trip to the cinema is like going to a restaurant, certain suburbs can expect a lot more fine dining.