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Move over Netflix: here comes OzFlix, a streaming service dedicated to nothing but Australian movies.
The new service will be unveiled with a marketing campaign starting on Australia Day, and will go live "sometime" in the first half of 2016, says co-founder Ron Brown, a film and TV producer of more than 40 years' experience.
At start-up, Brown and his partner in the venture, industry veteran Alan Finney, aim to have between 250 and 400 movies on the service, with the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road, Oddball and Paper Planes - all hits at the local box office this year - sitting alongside less familiar fare. 
By the end of the first year of operation they hope to have 1000 titles. "At the end of three years I'd like to have everything," Brown says. "Our database identifies just over 2000 titles, going all the way back to The Story of the Kelly Gang [the 1906 film made in Melbourne and as the world's first narrative feature].
"We'll eventually have every Aussie movie ever," he says. "That is our objective."
Whether or not the concept strikes a chord with the masses, it has certainly resonated with the industry. A roll call of actors, producers and directors have lent their support, with the likes of Sigrid Thornton, Claudia Karvan???, Stephan Elliott (director of Priscilla), Kriv Stenders (Red Dog), and Dr George Miller (Mad Max) filming segments for a promotional video for the service.
Brown and Finney have set up a parallel not-for-profit organisation, the Australian Film Futures Foundation, which is in discussions to make the collection of the National Film and Sound Archive available for streaming.
"It will give people a greater overview of our industry," says Finney, a key player in the emergence of the Australian new wave of the 1970s, and now the chair of the Australian Film Institute and AACTA. "It will fill a hunger among up-and-coming filmmakers. We have a very proud and substantial and creatively valuable industry in this country, though a lot of people don't realise that."
Meg Labrum, general manager of collections at the NFSA, says that while no deal has been finalised it was looking good, "on the basis that we're both committed to exactly the same thing - getting Australian films out as far and wide as possible. Anything that is going to bring Australian films into the limelight is fantastic."
Labrum hopes that if all goes well, the NFSA's entire collection of Australian material might eventually be available to stream over the service.
Certainly Brown has had a long time to think about what OzFlix might eventually look like. He says he recently went back through his emails to find the date he first mentioned it:   April 22, 2006.
At one point, he proposed to Foxtel the idea of a channel dedicated to Australian movies, but was rebuffed. "They said, 'Nobody likes Australian movies'," he recalls. "I think they were paying more attention to media reports about the 'death' of the local industry than they were to the audience trends for Australian drama."
Fair enough. But all those films that sank without trace - surely at least some deserved to?
"I'm going to have to disagree with you," says Brown. "I don't think every Australian film is a great film, but every Australian film deserves to find whatever audience it can."
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