From Matt Damon to Zac Efron, Hollywood stars are decamping for Australia. So are their lucrative film projects

If the history of Hollywood were a film, 2020 would be the dark night of the soul — the moment when all hope appeared lost.

In North America, last year saw the lowest number of cinema tickets sold per capita in at least 40 years, if not a century.

And as the coronavirus situation steadily worsened, it made it difficult not just to screen movies but to shoot them.

That raised concerns about a lack of content in the pipeline right when demand from homebound consumers was highest.

As Patrick Clair, the Emmy-winning title designer, told the ABC in September: “I think we are all going to have to get very creative about how we keep telling stories in a world where filming is restricted for safety reasons.”