There will be no fresh helpings of The White Lotus, The Last of Us or even Emily in Paris beaming into front rooms when summer fades. Nor will a screen version of the musical Wicked, starring Ariana Grande, be showing in your local cinema in the spring. And all shooting on Gladiator 2 in Morocco is likely to be indefinitely paused. Already, the wails are almost audible.

On this, 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 earlier reactions to the equivalent writers’ strike, running since the beginning of May.

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Production companies in countries with a booming film unit economy, such as Britain, Ireland, Greece and Canada, are braced for an unprecedented slowdown. Speaking from an office above an empty studio soundstage at Brightlight, the Canadian film-maker Shawn Williamson told the BBC that the Canadian entertainment industry depends on American writers and actors. Brightlight was the base for shows including ABC’s The Good Doctor and Firefly Lane on Netflix and makes up to nine shows at a time. “All of these things are now on hold while we wait for the studios and the unions to sort things out,” said Williamson.

In Britain and other European countries, the national acting and writing unions are monitoring the damage. And the technical unions representing crew and support industries share the sense of foreboding. Bectu, the union for the British creative industries, has warned that a “perfect storm is brewing” for freelancers. Many productions are now at risk of going into hiatus, it believes, and it expects others will follow if mediation fails.

Although the writers’ strike, which prevents all editing and even work-related emails, has already had an impact on location filming in many countries, it is the actors’ solidarity that is clamping down on productions. This autumn and winter there will be less scripted entertainment, with fewer stars to admire and fewer stories to enjoy.

The set of Wicked in Buckinghamshire, where Grande was set to portray Glinda the Good, has been abandoned. Beetlejuice, filming at Leavesden, and Deadpool 3 are all said to be significantly affected, but HBO’s House of the Dragon may escape as it has a largely non-American cast. Actors are also believed to be cancelling sound recording sessions on films that have already been shot.

British location manager Ben Sanderson is calling for more help for all those in support industries. “It’s freelance film production professionals who will, at a moment’s notice, not be earning a wage. I have had numerous phone calls of worried individuals just in the department I work in,” he told the Observer.

Film production in Britain employs around 100,000 people, both directly and indirectly, and was worth £12.9bn before the pandemic. Overnight, a lot of these people are now unemployed. So while viewers cope with an upcoming lack of new entertainment, others are facing a lack of pay. There is real pain now that will touch more than famous faces who are waving placards.