The weekend that saved the Oscars?

This could just be the weekend that saved the Oscars. Or... not.

All of Hollywood was on tenterhooks yesterday to find out if the industry's film and television writers were now willing to end their three-month strike, which has played havoc with some of America’s favourite television shows, kept the red carpet from being rolled out at last month's Golden Globe awards and had been on course to scupper the Academy Awards as well.

For the past week, expectations have been high that the writers and the studio chiefs could finally overcome their differences. First, the two sides hammered out the informal framework for a deal, then tried to commit it to writing, so the broader Writers’ Guild membership could debate it at twin meetings in New York and Los Angeles scheduled for last night. Some predicted the writers could be back at work as soon as tomorrow.

All of Friday came and went, however, with no draft agreement in sight – apparently because of last-minute changes that the studios proposed and the writers resisted. There was no guarantee, either, that the membership meetings – at a Times Square hotel in New York, and at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles – would embrace the terms hammered out by the Guild on their behalf.

The 14-week stoppage has radicalised some writers, who believe their guild should keep fighting until it has secured a fair deal on revenue-sharing from the internet and other new media outlets. But it has also left many others sufficiently fearful and debt-laden to be willing at this point to accept more or less any deal short of humiliation.

The Oscars are not exactly the key point of the negotiations, but they do carry symbolic weight – as well as bountiful economic benefits for limo drivers, dress designers, hairdressers and others. Organisers of the awards, a fortnight away, say they are planning for every eventuality, and promise some sort of show, even if the star actors and actresses – who have agreed not to cross any writers' picket lines - do not appear.

Some people have lost their nerve already, none more so than Vanity Fair magazine, which usually holds a high-profile Oscar night bash but has just decided to forgo it this year, in deference to those in the industry so broke that they will be in no mood to party, Oscars or no Oscars. A number of other high-profile, private Oscar-watching parties have been cancelled for very similar reasons, although a spokesman said Elton John's annual bash, which raises funds for his Aids foundation, was still on.

When the strike started, in November, the studios appeared determined to deny the writers more than token contractual guarantees on present and future internet-generated revenue, and the writers appeared equally determined to do what it would take to force the bosses to change their minds. Two things broke the deadlock, however. The studios reached a deal with the Directors Guild as they negotiated their own contract renewal, thus setting a template for possible resolution of the writers strike. And the writers, for their part, started to break the closed ranks of the studio heads by making one-on-one deals with various independent production companies and studio subsidiaries.

Both developments appeared to concentrate minds sufficiently to convince the two sides to start talking again after a two-month hiatus. The détente was also chivvied along by a handful of high-profile writers and actors, including Tom Hanks and George Clooney, who worried that a protracted strike would do untold harm to the blue-collar film-making class – technicians, set decorators, sound editors, and so on – and potentially tip southern California all the way into a looming recession.

Film-makers like Mr Clooney have found it hard enough to get their pet projects off the ground without having to deal with studio heads made even more bloody-minded by the industrial action. In an interview with Radio Times last week, Mr Clooney bemoaned the much slower pace of quality film production now compared with the mid-1960s and early 1970s. "They don't make films like that any more," he said. "You couldn't come near making those films."