HOLLYWOOD’S WRITERS AND ACTORS might go on strike next summer. The big studios are rushing even more mediocre big-budget movies into production now, in case the strike creates what Entertainment Weekly calls “A Year Without Movies.”

I can hardly wait.

Imagine if the strike drags on, into the summer and fall of the year the cinema once predicted would be a space-age wonderworld.

As the supply of would-be blockbusters dwindles, the multiplexes will try to keep their seats filled by bringing back past favorites. The Pacific Place 11 could turn into an impromptu classic-film festival.

In between the oldies (or at least the more popular films from the mid-to-late ’90s (yes, expect Titanic and The Phantom Menace to be dragged out again and again)), the studios will release everything they’ve got lying around. Time Warner will raid its HBO and TNT subsidiaries, shunting made-for-cable movies into theatrical duty. Direct-to-video horror snores, shoot-’em-ups, and “erotic thrillers” will get an unexpected day or two on big screens.

One screen at a time, indies will infiltrate the (already fiscally beleagured) multiplexes.

Audiences will get the chance to get bored to tears by countless low-budget films made by perky white boys about the struggles faced by perky white boys trying to make low-budget films.

Young couples will make out freely, undisturbed by the laughless genre-film parodies unspooling before them.

And maybe, just maybe, some worthy films will get shown in places besides the U Districts and Capitol Hills of North America. Audiences everywhere could discover movies that really move, with real stories and characters. Maybe even a few films from other countries.

If that happens, watch out. The studios and their media-conglomerate owners will fight back. The studio-controlled TV gossip shows will refuse to cover these pipsqueak upstart films. Instead, they’ll trot out as many “real” movie stars as are willing to appear, pleading for an end to the strike so “real” movies can again be made. As more and more viewers discover they prefer movies with actors instead of stars, more stars will join the public pleading, even breaking ranks with their own union if necessary.

By the time the actors, the writers, and the studios finally get their collective acts together and get back to work, whole swaths of the moviegoing public might have decided they no longer need nor care for the return of Hollywood product.

I know, I know. It’s the kind of happy ending that only happens in the movies.

TOMORROW: Whither CNN?

IN OTHER NEWS: Aside from the fates of the now ex-employees, reading about dead dot-coms is so much fun. Why, I wonder?

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