Lights! Camera! Industrial action!

Hollywood actors pulled focus as they joined a long-running strike by screenwriters who want to revisit how studios pay them for their work in an age of streaming and artificial intelligence

- Vanessa Thorpe

There will be no fresh helpings of The White Lotus, The Last of Us or even Emily in Paris beaming into front rooms come September. Nor will a screen version of the musical Wicked, starring Ariana Grande, be showing in your local cinema early next year. And all shooting on Gladiator 2 in Morocco is likely to be indefinitely paused.

After the first weekend of the American screen actors' strike, the level of frustration registered by film and TV drama fans around the world has dwarfed reactions to the writers' strike, which started in May.

After negotiations collapsed in Los Angeles, the gloves came off in a fight over the way the streaming services are seen to be pushing down pay and investing in the use of artificial intelligence in production.

And if an industrial relations struggle benefits from a dose of charisma, then the battle to secure the income of the talent behind a large proportion of streaming content has much more of the right ingredient. Last Friday, George Clooney became the latest celebrity to back the campaign. "Actors and writers in large numbers have lost their ability to make a living," he said.

The recognisability of many taking a stand, from Clooney to Margot Robbie and Brian Cox, unlike their faceless counterparts inside the writers' rooms, has brought the Hollywood dispute to the top of the news agenda.

The actors say they are prepared for a long fight. Among them is Barbie star Robbie, who has withdrawn from promotional events, and Susan Sarandon, who argued that the issues of streaming and AI had to be dealt with. "We're in an old contract for a new type of business and it's just not working for most people," the actor told reporters in New York.