The cinema won a bid and will inherit equipment from the film Happy Feet Two, allowing it to reopen with a world-class digital set-up.

With the closure of the purpose-built film studio for Happy Feet Two late last year, all of the studio's assets were due to be sold off by tender.

However, the Regal Cinema Trust wrote to the director George Miller telling him of the Regal's plight.

Miller's production house, Kennedy Miller Mitchell, was happy to help out the struggling regional cinema and struck up a deal that includes a new screen, sound system and projection equipment.

Australian Guild of Screen Composers executive director and Regal Cinema trustee Jo Smith said she was ecstatic with the outcome.

"We said we would like to tender but we only have a limited amount of money, not nearly enough to put in a competitive bid," Ms Smith said.

"We did not realistically expect to hear back."

She anticipates the Regal to run as a community cinema for the next six months, operating three times a week, before opening to a commercial operator full-time.

She said the committee wanted to keep the Regal community-friendly and will sell movie tickets for $7.

■ The Regal will reopen from Friday, February 21. The opening weekend schedule was due to be released as The Star went to print.