After a devastating earthquake hit Nepal last Saturday, the far-reaching effects have been felt globally. Issues with the slow pace of aid, a horrifying death toll that might top 10,000 and worries over the country’s fragile economy have understandably eclipsed someone who is also feeling the effects: Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson.

The wrestler turned remarkably bankable A-lister (his films have made over $5bn at the worldwide box office) is following up his turn in the monstrously successful Fast & Furious 7 with a lead role in San Andreas, a disaster movie about a quake that hits Los Angeles. And up until last week, the slick trailer-perfect destruction and star appeal of Johnson made it seem like a perfect early-summer option. But the impending 29 May release date has become a source of concern for studio Warner Bros.

Watch a video review Guardian

A carefully plotted worldwide campaign is now being tweaked and a spokesman told press that it’s important to be “sensitive to those affected by this tragic event”.

It’s a familiar story for Hollywood. San Andreas isn’t the first and it won’t be the last film to be affected by events in the real world. A slightly modified campaign is a small price to pay and pales in comparison to previously affected films.

Macaulay Culkin and Elijah Wood in controversial thriller The Good Son. Photograph: Sportsphoto/Allstar/Cinetext Collection

In 1993, the British release of Macaulay Culkin thriller The Good Son was cancelled after the plot shared too many similarities with the James Bulger killing. The film, an Ian McEwan-scripted thriller in which Culkin plays a murderous 13-year-old, was withdrawn by the distributor for two years in the UK before an edited version emerged on VHS. Given the details of the murder, which were linked, at least in the media, to the killers watching certain “video nasties”, a number of other releases were also affected at the time. A moral panic led to a stricter period of certification, including a three-year gap between the release of Reservoir Dogs at the cinema and on home video.

Similarly in 2007, Ben Affleck’s directorial debut, the Boston-set crime thriller Gone Baby Gone, was pulled from the London film festival after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. A plot that featured a missing young blonde girl, played by an actor called Madeleine, scared the distributor into delaying the release.

Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man. Photograph: PR

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Hollywood found itself desperately scrambling to react with sensitivity. A teaser trailer for Spider-Man featuring the twin towers was canned, shots of the buildings were digitally removed from Zoolander and Serendipity, the terrorist thriller Collateral Damage was delayed and a Jackie Chan comedy about a World Trade Center window washer who foils a terrorist plot was cancelled.

While the failure of some films at the time was blamed on a changed public mood or a diminished appetite for entertainment, it’s possible that other films benefitted. The success of Moulin Rouge, a crowd-pleasing musical, and Zoolander, a goofy comedy, could be attributed to the respite from reality they provided, while the eventual success of Spider-Man the following summer proved that Americans were eager to see a hero saving New York from bad guys.

The upcoming release of San Andreas, which isn’t being postponed, might be too close to real events for some, but it’s likely that for a great deal of the moviegoing population, it won’t make a difference. After the Aurora shooting during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, the film still managed to make $448m in the US, even if the tragedy did result in a belated release date and hasty recut for Gangster Squad, which eventually flopped. Chances are, it would have failed regardless.

We don’t know how audiences will respond to San Andreas yet (although we can bet on critics mentioning the connection to the Nepal earthquake repeatedly) but Warner Bros has made one smart move to offset any negative publicity. As part of the amended marketing strategy for the film, the studio has decided to include information on how to donate to the relief efforts in Nepal. Which means that a film that was originally pitched as the-Rock-vs-falling-rocks might now help save lives.