How it works
After a shoot, a curated set of unit stills is sent to the cast — or their representatives — for review. Each actor looks through the frames they appear in and either approves them or rejects the ones they object to.
How much they have to approve is set by their contract, and the clause is almost always written as an approval minimum rather than a rejection allowance. The common wording obliges an actor to approve at least around 50% of the solo shots and 75% of the group shots they appear in. The bar is higher on group images because an actor rejecting one does not only remove their own likeness — it takes the whole frame, and everyone else in it, out of the campaign.
The inverse of that same clause is what the industry calls kill rights: whatever an actor is not obliged to approve, they may “kill”. The two describe one arrangement from opposite ends, and you will hear both on set — but it is the approval percentage that is contractually stated and that a production has to track and evidence.
The 50% and 75% figures above are simply what we see most often in practice. Every deal is negotiated, and the actual minimums, how solo and group images are defined, and what happens if an actor approves fewer than their quota all vary from contract to contract — so always work from the agreement in front of you, not from a rule of thumb. Nothing here is legal advice, and it is not guidance on how to draft or interpret a contract; for that, speak to your production’s legal team.
Once cast and stakeholders have signed off, the surviving frames form the approved set. The unit publicist or a producer then usually works through it to choose the key selects handed to the distributor. Approval is closely tied to cast clearance, which confirms the talent have permitted an image’s use for publicity.
Running talent approval well means giving cast a clear, watermarked set to review, tracking decisions against each person’s limit, and keeping an auditable record of who approved what. For the full process, read our guide to how talent image approvals work.