How kill rights work
When unit stills are shot on a film or TV production, the talent appearing in them often hold a contractual right to control which images are published. Exercising that right, by rejecting an image, is called “killing” it.
The allowance is normally expressed as an approval percentage: commonly a minimum of around 50% of solo shots and 75% of group shots approved, so an actor can kill more of their solo images than their group ones.
In a talent approval workflow, cast review a curated set of images and kill the ones they object to, up to their limit. The surviving frames form the approved set, from which the unit publicist or a producer picks the key selects delivered to the distributor.
For the full picture, covering where kill rights come from, how killing works in practice and how the percentages are tracked, read our guide to kill rights explained.