The Hollywood writers’ strike threatens to deprive films such as Atonement, The Great Debaters and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly of the prized “Oscar bounce” at the box office.

The Academy Awards’ global audience offers an extraordinary platform for films that lack a blockbuster advertising budget, and best-picture wins helped to send ticket sales for The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love soaring in the late 1990s.

The awards are credited with adding $106 million to Titanic’s $494 million takings in 1997.

But a ten-week stoppage by 10,500 writers threatens to cause chaos in Hollywood’s lucrative awards season.

The strike has already forced next Sunday’s Golden Globes to be demoted from a three-hour glitzy dinner party to a one-hour press conference after the Screen Actors Guild told actors not to cross the picket line.

The NBC television network, which broadcasts the event to about 20 million viewers, had hoped that stars attending the customary parties at the Beverly Hilton Hotel would appear once their prizes were announced so that it could show them arriving on the red carpet and broadcast a special feature on the awards.

But the Writers Guild put its foot down to prevent what one official called the Golden Globes scam and threatened to picket the event if it were anything more than a press conference to announce the winners.

Jorge Camara, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which hosts the awards, said: “We are all very disappointed that our traditional awards ceremony will not take place and 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.

“We take some comfort, however, in knowing that the Golden Globe Award recipients will be announced on the date originally scheduled.”

The writers’ union has struck separate deals with the late-night comic David Letterman and United Artists to allow them to resume work. It has also granted a waiver to the Screen Actors Guild’s own awards ceremony on January 27 and the Independent Spirit Awards on February 23. But the guild has refused to lift its objections to the Oscars, watched by 40 million viewers in America and tens of millions more around the world.

Patric Verrone, president of the union’s West Coast division, told the Hollywood trade paper Variety: “I’m hoping they see the collapse of the awards season and our ability to make interim deals with other companies as a sign that we are serious, and they need to get back to the table with us.”

The clout of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hosts the Oscars, has led many to believe that the writers will relent and allow the show to go on. Bruce Davis, the academy’s director, told the Los Angeles Times: “We really think we can work out some sort of agreement that will allow us to do a traditional Academy Awards broadcast.

“We wll not be resorting to the kind of expedients that the Golden Globes are resorting to. We can do the kind of show the public expects of us.”

The economic impact of a cancellation would richochet around Hollywood, from film producers to the paparazzi who sell red-carpet snaps of the stars. Accepting director of the year for Into the Wild at the Palm Springs film festival on Saturday, Sean Penn noted that the Hollywood awards round was a season in hell, but that the ceremonies “get butts in seats”.

Jeff Bock, box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations Inc, which tracks ticket sales, said the impact of a cancelled Oscar show would be worst for small-budget films and those that have not completed their US run. He singled out Atonement, The Great Debators and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, noting that Juno and Charlie Wilson’s War had reached a large US audience. “The people who really lose out are the fans,” he said.

Editor's choice

• Exclusive: Listen to AC/DC's Black Ice
• Burning Bush with W
• Boy George on sex, drugs and Amy Winehouse