For an actor to receive it, he/she will generally have to be well-established, with box-office drawing power.
Movie Billing Block movie#
The two or three top-billed actors in a movie will usually be announced prior to the title of the movie this is referred to as "above-title billing".
Movie Billing Block tv#
Frequently, top-billed actors are also named in advertising material such as trailers, posters, billboards, and TV spots. They usually play the principal characters in the film and have the most screen time. The actors whose names appear first are said to have "top billing". Instead, a separate production company may have actually made the film or financed a substantial part of the film.įor the South African TV show, see Top Billing (TV programme). However, a studio may not necessarily be the party that produced it. The name of the studio that is normally credited is the one that distributed the film. In the absence of opening credits, these roles will often be credited in reverse order at the beginning of the closing credits. While there are numerous variations, most opening credits use some variation of the following basic order. The order in which credits are billed generally signify their importance. See also: Opening credits § Common opening credits order Occasionally, even the title is left to the end, such as in The Passion of the Christ (2004), Avatar (2009), Inception (2010), and the Dark Knight trilogy.
Movie Billing Block series#
Although popularised by the Star Wars series (see below) and used sporadically in films such as The Godfather (1972) and Ghostbusters (1984), this "title-only" billing became an established form for summer blockbusters in 1989, with Ghostbusters II (1989), Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), and The Abyss (1989) following the practice. īy the 1990s, some films had moved all billing to the film's end, with the exception of company logos and the title. īilling demands even extended to publicity materials, down to the height of the letters and the position of names. In addition, more stars began to demand top billing. As a result, since the late 1960s, a significant amount of the billing is reserved for the closing credits of the film, which generally includes a recap of the billing shown at the beginning. This, combined with changes in union contracts and copyright laws, led to more actors and crew members being included in the credits sequence, expanding its size significantly. Īfter the studio system's collapse in the 1950s, actors and their agents fought for billing on a film-by-film basis.
The studios still followed the billing system of the silent era. ĭuring the era of the studio system, on-screen billing was presented at the beginning of a film only a restatement of the cast and possibly additional players appeared at the end, because the studios had actors under contract and could decide billing. Big stars such as Pickford, Fairbanks, and Chaplin were billed above the title, while lesser stars and supporting players were billed below the title. Also originating during that time was the system of billing above and below the title, to delineate the status of the players. From then on, actors received billing on film. She signed on with the release of her first IMP film, The Broken Oath (1910), she became the first film star to receive billing on the credits of her film. Laemmle wanted Lawrence to be his star attraction, so he offered her more money (US$250 per week (equivalent to $7,271 in 2021)) and marquee billing, something Biograph did not allow. In 1910, Lawrence was lured away from Biograph by Carl Laemmle when he started the Independent Motion Picture Company (IMP). According to Mary Pickford's biography Doug and Mary, she was referred to by the public as "the Biograph girl" in all of her films before 1905.īefore Mary Pickford, the public used to call Florence Lawrence the " Biograph girl".
As late as the 1910s, stars as famous as Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin were not known by name to moviegoers. Actors themselves did not want to reveal their film careers to their stage counterparts via billing on film, because at that time working in the movies was unacceptable to stage actors. They also feared that, once actors were billed on film, they would be more popular and would seek large salaries. From the beginning of motion pictures in the 1900s to the early 1920s, the moguls that owned or managed big film studios did not want to bill the actors appearing in their films because they did not want to recreate the star system that was prevalent on Broadway at that time.
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