SADLY for movie fans living in Wodonga there has been more drama off-screen than on location with the city's new cinema complex.
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On Monday news came that film-goers will have to wait until 2021 for Wodonga's 10-theatre hub to open.
At the time he predicted the movie house slated for the west end of Junction Place would be open in mid-2019 subject to approvals and planning processes.
At the time, senior councillors Anna Speedie and John Watson noted there had a series of cinema proposals that had fizzed.
Mr Williams also acknowledged in 2017 that plans for a cinema had floated around Wodonga since the VCR was seen as the death of moviedom.
"We've been wanting one here since the 1980s, it's going to make a big difference because when you've got something like that people just come for that," he said.
Instead the Regent Cinemas in Albury is set to remain the Border's only place to see new films until 2021.
This is disappointing for Wodonga cinephiles, but also a reflection of the economy.
It may too demonstrate that a 10-cinema complex was overly ambitious when you consider the Regent did not have nine theatres until 2004 after reaching six in 1996.
In 1998, six-cinema hubs were being proposed for the Birallee shopping centre in west Wodonga and Wodonga Plaza.
Neither made the final cut and a property manager then declared 14 cinemas was the limit for viable big screens on the Border.
More than 20 years later and Wodonga's cinema ambition may be realised for the opening of Fast and Furious 10 in 2021.
Although Wodonga's own cinema saga is best summed up with the title of a 1980s fantasy movie - The NeverEnding Story.
