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In football, it's called the "hurry-up offense," running play after play without huddling or stopping for a break. The strategy is often used in the last minutes of a game when time is running out.

Something similar is happening in the film industry. Hollywood has gone into hurry-up mode to try to get films started and finished before a July 1 walkout by members of the Screen Actors Guild. Adding to the pressure on the industry are labor contracts with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Writers Guild of America which expire April 30. Strikes by the two actors' unions would bring an immediate halt to film production; a writers' strike will have longer-term repercussions because developing a movie script can take anywhere from several months to years, in extreme cases. (When scriptwriters go on strike, most don't actually stop writing. They simply stop submitting new material.) The three unions combined have 146,000 members, who want better paychecks for new works and higher residuals from old ones.

Friday, April 6 thus became Hollywood's de facto deadline for getting films into production—and, hopefully, finished—before July 1. All the production facilities in LA are scrambling to beat the deadlines. Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. has two productions scheduled to begin soon: a sequel to American Psycho, and The Monster's Ball, starring Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton. Warner Brothers is hoping to finish two sequels to The Matrix. The panic is creating plenty of overtime for the industry's huge technical workforce.

Hands-on types may be scrambling, but the strike potential has already brought much new development activity to a standstill, according to several reports. Agents and producers are finding themselves with an unusual amount of time on their hands. Production companies have stopped casting new projects, casting director Janet Hirshenson told the Wall Street Journal, pointing out that executives won't begin making casting decisions until they know what's going to happen. Many in the business have scheduled vacations in May and June on the assumption that the WGA and AFTRA strikes are, in fact, done deals.