How is the film industry reacting to the US crisis

A.� Hollywood has reacted quickly to events in New York. One of the first things to be censored are materials - trailers and print adverts as well as films themselves - featuring imagery of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. Sony and Amblin Entertainment have announced they will change the ending of Men in Black 2, due for release next summer, because it included sequences shot at the World Trade Centre.

Sony's subsidiary Columbia Pictures has pulled a trailer already in circulation for next summer's Spiderman, in which bank robbers are caught in a spider web between the twin towers.

The movie Nosebleed, a Jackie Chan comedy about a window cleaner at the World Trade Centre who foils a terrorist plot, has, naturally, been cancelled

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Q.� Have any films been delayed as a result of what happened

A.� The disaster has affected the autumn line-up of film and dramas. Disney decided to postpone the September release of Barry Sonnenfeld's comedy Big Trouble, because it involves a bomb smuggled on a plane. Warner Bros is likewise shelving the Arnold Schwarzenegger drama Collateral Damage, due out this month, in which Schwarzenegger avenges the death of his wife at the hands of terrorists. A good deal of promotional advertising has been pulled and Los Angeles executives are considering the fate of TV series with names such as The Agency and 24, which deal with crime fighting and include scenes of terrorism and plane hi-jacking.

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Q.� How much has the image of the twin towers been used by the American film industry

A.� They were frequently used as an emblem for New York and commercialism. Miramax, the independent production house turned Disney subsidiary, includes an image of the World Trade Centre on its logo. The towers also featured heavily in film plots. The 1996 thriller Independence Day saw alien spaceships zap the White House and New York's Empire State Building, and major landmark buildings have featured prominently in disaster movies such as Godzilla and Die Hard.

The video game market has also been affected, with at least one game called�"Majestic" being pulled by Electronic Arts because it involves sending players seeking to solve a murder plot a series of threatening phone calls and e-mails including pre-recorded screams.

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By Katharine MacColl

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