Hollywood is scrapping projects costing millions because of the terrorist attacks.

Any film or television program with a plot featuring terrorists, New Yorkers in danger or even scenes of the New York skyline is being abandoned, delayed or rewritten.

One of the first projects to be pulled from release is Arnold Schwarzenegger's new film, the £40 million Collateral Damage, about a man whose family is killed by a terrorist bomb. It was due to open in America on Oct 5.

"Warner Bros Pictures is making an immediate and complete effort to retrieve all outdoor advertising, to pull the website and cancel all radio and television advertising and promotions," studio executives said in a statement.

The first episode of a new television series, The Agency, about the CIA, which was to be aired next week, has also been pulled because it includes a reference to Osama bin Laden as the mastermind of a plot to blow up Harrods.

"Studios are very aware of the problems they are facing and they want to be seen to be doing the right thing," said Ron Krueger, an entertainment consultant with Movie and TV Marketing.

"Anything that might be seen as offensive or upsetting is being pulled immediately. At the moment money is not a consideration. Probably some of the films being shelved now will eventually be screened but not until next year at the earliest."

Other films which were due to be released in the next few weeks but have now been recalled include Big Trouble, a Disney comedy starring Tim Allen featuring a nuclear device loose in Miami and Sidewalks of New York because although the plot does not involve terrorism, the title and setting of the romantic comedy were enough for Paramount to deem it unsuitable for release.

Fox has pulled its television film The Rats, originally to be aired on Monday, because it takes place in Manhattan as hundreds of rodents threaten to overtake the city; and the NBC network is editing out scenes of the World Trade Centre from the opening credits of Law and Order: SVU.

"Every movie and TV programme is being carefully examined to see if it would be inappropriate," said Mr Krueger. "Scripts for some that have not yet been filmed are being rewritten.

Nosebleed, another film in development, stars Jackie Chan as a World Trade Centre window washer who battles terrorists bent on blowing up the Statue of Liberty. "That was the way it was written but that's not the way we're going to do it," said Amanda Lundberg, an MGM spokesman.

"It's too premature at the moment to talk about how it will be changed."

Production has also been halted - possibly indefinitely - on Terrorism, a big-budget, five-part television mini-series about a series of terrorist attacks on New York.

Even advertising for coming attractions is being carefully monitored.

In a trailer for the big-budget film Spider-Man, the comic book superhero spins a web between the Trade Centre towers to foil bank robbers.

Following protests from outraged Americans, posters and billboards featuring an upside-down American flag - a symbol of distress - as part of the advertising campaign for Robert Redford's new film The Last Castle have been pulled by DreamWorks.

The film, in which Redford plays a military prison inmate leading an uprising against the brutal governor, played by The Sopranos star James Gandolfini, is to be released next month.

"The advertisements were obviously placed before this week's tragic events," said a studio source.

"It has taken longer than we would like to get the ads taken down," he added.