User:Cymru.lass/Drafts

Films
For a variety of reasons, film actors were not billed for their roles from the invention of motion pictures in the 1900s to the early 1920s. Film moguls did not want to bill the actors appearing in their films because they did not want to duplicate the "star system" prominent on Broadway at that time. They also feared that billing actors would give them celebrity status and lead them to seek higher salaries. Actors themselves were reluctant to be billed in films, because at that time working in the movies was deplorable and unacceptable to stage actors. As late as the 1910s, stars such as Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin were not known by name to moviegoers. Before 1905, Mary Pickford was referred to by the public as the "Biograph girl", which is a reference to Biograph, was an early motion picture producer.

Before Mary Pickford, the public used to call Florence Lawrence the "Biograph girl"; but in 1910 Lawrence was lured away from Biograph by Carl Laemmle when he started his new Independent Motion Picture Company (IMP). Laemmle wanted Lawrence to be his star attraction so he offered her more money ($250 per week) and marquee billing, something Biograph did not allow at the time. She signed on; with the release of her first IMP file, The Broken Oath, she quickly became the first film star to receive billing on the credits of her film. From then on, actors received billing on film. Also originating during that time was the system of billing above and below the title, to delineate the status of the players. Big stars such as Pickford, Fairbanks, and Chaplin were billed above the title, while lesser movie stars and supporting players were billed below the title.

During 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. The studios still followed the billing system of the silent era.

However, after the studio system's collapse in the 1950s, actors and their agents fought for billing on a film-by-film basis. 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. 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. In addition, more stars began to demand top billing.

Billing demands even extended to publicity materials, down to the height of the letters and the position of names.

By the 1990s, some films had moved all billing to the film's end, with the exception of company logos and the title. Although popularised by the Star Wars series (see below) and used sporadically in films such as The Godfather and Ghostbusters, this "title-only" billing became an established form for summer blockbusters in 1989, with Ghostbusters II, Lethal Weapon 2, and The Abyss following the practice. Occasionally, even the title is left to the end, such as in The Mummy Returns, Avatar, The Passion of the Christ, Hot Fuzz, Apocalypto, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight.