Striking Hollywood scriptwriters have forced the cancellation of next Sunday's star-studded Golden Globe awards ceremony and are now threatening to disrupt the Oscars.

Golden Globe organisers feared that the gala ceremony, which had been due to attract nominees ranging from George Clooney and Angelina Jolie to Daniel Day-Lewis and Britain's Keira Knightley, would have become a travesty, with many influential stars staying away in sympathy and others forced to run the gauntlet of rowdy picket lines in order to get in.

The results of the awards will instead be revealed at an hour-long press conference, screened live in America on NBC News, said the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which sponsors the show.

NBC and the HFPA said that it was undecided whether the red carpet would be rolled out for their event and, if so, whether it would be televised.

The Globes spectacle is certain to be a low key affair compared to the usual three-hour extravaganza, which in ordinary years rivals only the Oscars in glamour and glitz.

Jeff Hermanson, a union spokesman, warned that the union was still ready to stage a protest at the event on January 13 to prevent organisers from trying to put on an awards show under the guise of a news conference.

“If it’s truly a press conference that does not take the form of an awards show, we would have no reason to picket it,” he told Reuters. “But if it’s an awards show under another name, it will be picketed.”

He added that the union has held talks with Globe sponsors on a possible deal to allow an awards ceremony that would not be televised, “but those conversations have not led to an agreement. And I don’t expect them to.”

Jorge Camara, the HFPA president, said that he was “very disappointed” that “millions of viewers worldwide will be deprived of seeing many of their favourite stars celebrating 2007’s outstanding achievements in motion pictures and television”.

The Golden Globes is the latest high profile event to fall victim to the nine-week-old strike by about 10,500 members of the Writers Guild of America demanding proper pay for work distributed online. Last night's lower-profile Critics Choice Awards did manage to go ahead thanks to a special waiver from the WGA permitting the show to use union writers, but the Globes had failed to secure a similar waiver.

Producers for yet another awards show set for tonight on CBS, the People’s Choice Awards, plan to present that event in a “magazine” format, showing pre-recorded clips of the winners instead of the usual live ceremony. The red-carpet entrance of People’s Choice stars has also been scrapped.

George Clooney had been credited with inspiring an actors' boycott of the awards ceremonies, after the Screen Actors Guild, the actors' union, revealed that 70 of its high-profile members were planning not to attend the Globes.

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