Woody Allen’s publisher has cancelled the planned release of his memoir Apropos of Nothing after dozens of its staff staged a walkout.

It comes after days of criticism focusing on claims the film director sexually abused his daughter Dylan Farrow.

“The decision to cancel Mr Allen‘s book was a difficult one,” a spokesman for Hachette Book Group said.

“At HBG we take our relationships with authors very seriously, and do not cancel books lightly.

“We have published and will continue to publish many challenging books. As publishers, we make sure every day in our work that different voices and conflicting points of views can be heard.”

But the move was criticised by horror writer Stephen King who was worried that a precedent had been set.

He tweeted: “The Hachette decision to drop the Woody Allen book makes me very uneasy. It’s not him; I don’t give a damn about Mr Allen. It’s who gets muzzled next that worries me.”

Allen’s book was scheduled to come out next month.

He has denied any wrongdoing and was never charged after two separate investigations in the 1990s.

But the allegations have received new attention in the #MeToo era.

Allen’s agreement with Hachette meant that he briefly shared a publisher with one of his biggest detractors, his son Ronan Farrow, whose Catch and Kill was released last year by the firm’s division Little, Brown and Company.

“Hachette’s publishing of Woody Allen’s memoir is deeply upsetting to me personally and an utter betrayal of my brother whose brave reporting, capitalised on by Hachette, gave voice to numerous survivors of sexual assault by powerful men,” Dylan Farrow said in a statement on Monday.

Ronan Farrow followed up a day later, calling Hachette’s decision to publish it “wildly unprofessional”.

Both he and his sister complained that the publisher had not reached out to fact check their father’s book.