Here’s a philosophical movie industry riddle: If year-end awards were handed out, but there was no awards show — no red carpet, no acceptance speeches, no post-ceremony parties — would they still matter? With yesterday’s cancellation of the Golden Globes telecast, it’s not a rhetorical question anymore.

Or, given the ongoing writers’ strike that is tightening its grip on the entertainment industry with each passing day, here’s perhaps a more timely variation on the riddle: If the Writers Guild of America can kick up this much dust around the little-respected and increasingly less-seen Golden Globes, just imagine what it can do in six weeks, when the globally anticipated Academy Awards arrive.

Late Monday afternoon, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, along with NBC, announced that the ongoing strike, which has persisted since early November and has already led the major TV networks to cancel a full development cycle, had claimed another, slightly more notable casualty: the star-studded gala that was scheduled to begin its three-hour broadcast Sunday evening at 8 p.m. Along with it, some of the town’s most festive Golden Globes parties, including those organized by HBO and Warner Bros., were called off.

Forget glitz and glamour — try labor actions and lying low. A few days ahead of the weekend that would typically draw Hollywood’s A-list, publicists were scrambling on Tuesday to decide whether their clients should attend a drastically altered, still-controversial Golden Globes event. And collectively, the industry began to look ahead to February and the Academy Awards, and the more explosive storm brewing on the horizon.

Though plans are still up in the air and celebrities, network brass, and awards officials are engaging in a behind-the-scenes tug of war, the tentative Golden Globes plans are as such: At 9 p.m. Sunday evening, a one-hour news conference, moderated by NBC News, will announce this year’s Globe winners. By treating it as a news event, the network is able to circumvent the current strike, since news writers are not affected by the current contract disagreement. But speculation remains as to whether the WGA will strike this new event, as well as what format the announcements will take (clearly it takes less than an hour to read off two dozen names).

NBC wants to bookend the news event with an evening of exclusive Golden Globes programming, namely with a special party show to air after the press conference (if the parties exist) and a pair of clip shows focusing on the history of the Golden Globes to air before.

“We are all very disappointed that our traditional awards ceremony will not take place this year and that millions of viewers worldwide will be deprived of seeing many of their favorite stars celebrating 2007’s outstanding achievements in motion pictures and television,” the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Jorge Camara, said in a statement late Monday. “We take some comfort, however, in knowing that this year’s Golden Globe Award recipients will be announced on the date originally scheduled.”

With the Golden Globes now to be handed out in less than a week, the question on everyone’s mind — movie studios, television networks, celebrities, and pundits — is what will happen to the 80th annual Academy Awards, a ceremony currently scheduled to take place on February 24? With nominations set to be announced on January 22, and no end to the strike in sight (negotiations have been stalled for more than a month), some are wondering if the closely followed and much-discussed Oscars ceremony might be the turning point for the impasse. With so much at stake for so many parties — including $80 million to the Los Angeles economy and somewhere around $15 million in advertising revenue for NBC — and with the WGA showing every indication of picketing the Oscars just as they have the Golden Globes, things in Tinseltown are about to get a lot more intense.

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More tense, that is, unless you’re Tom Cruise.

While the Golden Globes announcement was making the bigger headlines Monday evening, the more important development in the entertainment industry this week might just be the announcement by movie studio United Artists, controlled by Mr. Cruise and producing partner Paula Wagner, concerning its independent negotiations with the WGA.

Much as David Letterman has done in the television world with his Worldwide Pants production company, which negotiated a separate settlement with the writers, Mr. Cruise and Ms. Wagner have made UA the first movie studio to secure union cooperation.

While the specifics of the deal were not made public, the implications of the announcement could be profound. For starters, other smaller movie companies, such as the Weinstein Company and Lionsgate, have already engaged the WGA in talks, and if subsequent deals emerge, the negotiations between the major studios and the Guild — which ground to a halt on December 7 — would enter an entirely new phase, with the WGA gaining the upper hand.

Shortly after UA announced its settlement, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the major studios, issued a scathing statement against their colleagues: “One-off deals do nothing to bring the WGA closer to a permanent solution for working writers. These interim agreements are sideshows and mean only that some writers will be employed at the same time other writers will be picketing. In the end, until the people in charge at WGA decide to focus on the main event rather than these sideshows, the economic harm being caused by the strike will continue.”

In the short term, the UA agreement clearly helps the underdog studio and its owners gain ground on their competitors. But some observers have speculated that in the long term, if additional studios, both major and minor, resort to negotiating individual agreements, it’s not just the current writers’ strike that will change shape, but the very landscape of a new digitally minded movie industry.

ssnyder@nysun.com