The British film industry is bracing itself for a looming strike by actors and writers in Hollywood that is expected to take its toll on productions around the world.

Yesterday, the Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski pulled out of his $100-million (£49.1million) epic Pompeii, bringing the entire production to an abrupt halt, because the strike threatened to derail the shoot.

The dispute centres on writers and actors wanting a share of royalties from new media, most notably DVDs – which reportedly earn Hollywood more than $24 billion (£11.8 billion) a year – written into their contracts.

The studios are said to have angered staff by offering to pay a bonus only when a film becomes profitable. The strike is now scheduled for after June 2008, when many contracts expire.

Producers expecting the worst are putting as many projects as they can into production before March, the last start date that would allow a project to finish on time. Pulling the plug on films in mid-production is obviously expensive.

Barnaby Thompson, head of Ealing Studios, told The Times: “The strike will bring things to a grinding halt. Even if an actual strike is averted, there will be fewer projects ready to shoot after June, resulting in a de facto strike. If you haven’t got a film by the beginning of March, you won’t get anyone to connect to it.”

Eric Fellner, co-chairman of Working Title, whose box-office hits include Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, said: “It is affecting productions. All films are having to be finished by March. So, whether the strike goes ahead or not, there’s a de facto strike. Actors won’t work and writers won’t work.”

He likened the negative impact on film-making to the strike by baseball players a decade ago. “The players went on strike, which decimated the industry. The public lost confidence in the sport,” he said.

There are fears that the strike by the Screen Actors’ Guild could extend to British actors, either refusing to work out of sympathy with the Americans or because they are themselves members. Action by the writers’ guild could have the same impact.

Producers of Pompeii, which was to have been an ambitious adaptation of Robert Harris’s bestselling novel, said that they were being told by all the agents that they could not commit their actors beyond June 30 because of the strike.

The production was due to start shooting in August in Italy. That it has been stopped is particularly tough as millions of pounds are reported to have been invested already.

Mr Thompson believes that, if the strike goes ahead, there is a danger it could drag on for a long time, ultimately leading to a fall in the number of films being offered to audiences.

His forthcoming productions at Ealing include an adaptation of Noel Coward’s Easy Virtue. He said: “There is pressure on us to get it done before the strike.” At the moment, Britain is benefitting from the current rush to shoot films. Pinewood Shepperton Studios are bursting at the seams – with Batman, Mamma Mia!, His Dark Materialsand Sweeney Toddin various states of development – but they have given warning of a future loss in revenue.

Peter Carlton of FilmFour said that the strike is “certainly something that is having far-reaching implications”.

He added: “If it goes on for very long, it will upset the studio schedule. That’s the thing that will impact on the high street. Long-term, it can reduce the diversity of films as only the big studios can take that kind of hit.”

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