Possessory credit

A possessory credit in filmmaking is the use of a film credit which gives primary artistic recognition to a single person – usually (but not always) the film's director. Examples include "A Stanley Kubrick film" (The Shining), "A film by Quentin Tarantino" (Pulp Fiction), and "Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho" (Psycho). Possessory credit is also sometimes used in television programs, for example "Tyler Perry's House of Payne" (Tyler Perry's TBS sitcom House of Payne). Occasionally another word besides "film" is used such as "A Spike Lee Joint" or "A Martin Scorsese Picture". Possessory credit may also be given to the films producer, an example of this is Steven Spielberg presents Back To The Future.

Although the earliest use of possessory credit dates from 1915's The Birth of a Nation, the use of possessory credits expanded particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. The Writers Guild of America has repeatedly tried to limit possessory credits to writers, but has always been successfully opposed by the Directors Guild of America (DGA), leaving directors free to try to negotiate such credits if they wish.

Sometimes the possessory credit will go to the author of the novel on which the film was based on (such as Bram Stoker's Dracula or William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet). In the case of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, Burton was not the film's director, but instead the writer, producer, and a major creative voice on the film. This may also be an example of a possessory credit being chosen for marketing reasons, as Burton was a more recognized name than the film's director, Henry Selick.

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