Lights! Camera! Err . . . Strike. Again.

Hollywood is facing yet another catastrophic production shutdown – barely five months after the last one – over an actors’ pay dispute that has turned A-list stars such as Tom Hanks and Jack Nicholson against each other and forced George Clooney to step in as peacemaker.

If the strike goes ahead, film production will be cancelled, TV networks could find themselves with no new shows to broadcast in the autumn and thousands of set-builders, prop suppliers, caterers, make-up artists and other Hollywood workers could face financial ruin. Millions more Americans are likely to turn to iPhones and Wii games for entertainment, hastening what some regard as Hollywood’s inevitable obsolescence.

The last Hollywood strike, which began in November and ended in February, was over writers’ wages – in particular internet royalties. It concluded with the Writers Guild of America securing a more favourable deal with the Hollywood studios, which are represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

The deal was expected to serve as a guideline for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), whose old contract with the AMPTP expires today. That was not to be: the actors are demanding even better terms.

Unlike the writers, who formed a united front against the studios, the actors have managed to divide themselves into separate bickering camps before a strike has even been called, meaning that the dispute has been played out in the media like a real life version of MTV’s Celebrity Death-match as opposed to a serious discussion over who gets what in the digital economy.

On one side of the actors’ divide is SAG, which is taking a hard line against the studios. Its supporters include Jack Nicholson and Ben Stiller. On the other side is the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), which is more willing to compromise. Tom Hanks, twice an Oscar winner, has put his considerable weight behind AFTRA’s proposed deal, as have Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey and Morgan Fairchild. To make things more complicated SAG’s 120,000 members include 44,000 who also belong to AFTRA.

Over the weekend, George Clooney urged reconciliation. “Rather than pitting artist against artist, maybe we could find a way to get what both unions are looking for,” he said. “Because the one thing you can be sure of is that stories about Jack Nicholson versus Tom Hanks only strengthen the negotiating power of the AMPTP.”

While the multimillionaire A-listers try to out-grandstand each other Hollywood’s rank-and-file are preparing for the worst. “If you’re a below-the-line worker your blood is probably running cold, because they’re the ones that took the biggest hit from the writers’ strike,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation. He estimates that the writers’ strike cost the town $2.5 billion (£1.25 billion) in lost wages and other revenues.

So far the studios are playing it cool. The prospect of an actors’ strike has made it impossible to get insurance for many large-budget projects, so production has been effectively shut down for months. Two films in production, The Hannah Montana Movie and Angels & Demons– the Dan Brown adaptation starring Hanks – could be affected. Next summer’s blockbusters, such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, could stay on course during a strike by focusing on getting visual effects work done.

Nevertheless, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, one of the film’s producers, said that he was not looking forward to such a scenario. “The pain everybody felt over the past nine months certainly makes the prospect of another strike even more foreboding,” he said.

If a deal cannot be negotiated the studios could take their own action and enforce an actors’ “lockout”, thus preempting SAG from trying to continue talks under the threat of a more costly shutdown later in the year, when sets will have been built and production resumed. SAG could find itself further undermined by AFTRA if it ratifies the “Hanks deal” on July 7.

James Cromwell, a former SAG board member who is playing the first President Bush in Oliver Stone’s W, is one of many hoping that it will not come to that. He is urging the actors to come together and compromise because the sagging economy does not work in their favour.

“Militancy has its moments, he said. “Under the circumstances, militancy is useless.”

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