Film & TV Production Payroll & Spend Software
The buyer population — Motion picture and video production
Base industry report for 512110 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 4,594
- Under 10 employeesA
- 88%
- Establishments · USA
- 17,683
- Employment · USA
- 139,965
- Payroll · USA
- $13.7B
Of 4,594 Canadian establishments with employees, 88% have fewer than ten — an industry of very small operators. Each of those is one potential account, before any filter for size or fit.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
One thing must be trueEntry turns on a single condition that can be named and tested before much is spent. Clear it and this becomes an execution question; fail it and no amount of operating skill helps.
Displace an incumbent the screen found well defended — payments attached to the workflow, data that does not leave, a contract that renews itself. Share here means giving a buyer a reason to break something that currently works, which is a higher bar than being better.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 7
The binding constraint — incumbent vulnerability
The incumbents are not software vendors; they are the employer. Entertainment Partners and Cast & Crew sit on a production's payroll as employer of record: they issue the cheques, hold the workers' compensation cover, remit taxes, and report hours and contributions to the guild and union health and pension plans. A single production can carry up to 11 unions and guilds [B, 2005 trade interview with EP Canada's president]. Because the payroll company is the signatory employer, residuals owed on a picture keep flowing through it for years after wrap. The software (EP's SmartStudio and Movie Magic, Cast & Crew's PSL+ accounting, Start+ onboarding and Hours+ timecards) is bundled into that service, not sold on its own. Both are private-equity platforms that keep buying the edges. TPG agreed to acquire EP in 2019 [B]. EQT bought Cast & Crew from Silver Lake in 2018 [B]. Cast & Crew has since added Media Services (2020), The TEAM Companies (2021) and Backstage (2022), and runs Final Draft [B/C]. Software challengers attack by becoming an employer of record themselves. Wrapbook is one: it 'serves as your workers' employer for the purposes of withholdings, payroll taxes, unemployment, and workers' compensation' [C, vendor]. It entered through commercials, indie and non-union work, where onboarding speed matters more than a studio master agreement. It raised about $151M, but its valuation fell from $1B (2021) to $750M (2024) [B]. GreenSlate is the third full-service house and is consolidating too: it bought Vancouver's Circus, the onboarding app that claimed 70% of Canada's film and TV workforce [C, vendor]. The layers below payroll are where startups get in, and they get bought. Onboarding (Circus), spend cards (RollCredits, a $3M seed in 2024 [B]) and 1099 freelancer pay (LÜK Network) each sit next to whichever house holds the payroll. Circus's exit to GreenSlate shows where that layer ends up. Canada is the same structure. EP Canada and Cast & Crew Canada (Toronto and Vancouver offices) both handle payroll and residuals and, because BC and federal credits are labour-based, tax-incentive administration as well. GreenSlate now owns the leading Canadian onboarding app. Incumbent vulnerability decides it: the studio relationship, guild signatory status and the residuals tail all stay with the employer of record. A new entrant needs the balance sheet to carry payroll float and workers' comp risk before the software matters. How this differs from its neighbours: 512110-video-production-pipeline-software is the creative asset pipeline (shot tracking, review), not money or labour. 541514-eor-aor-international-hiring is cross-border EOR for full-time staff, not daily-hire union crew. 541514-hrm-human-resource-management is the HR core for permanent employees, and none of its vendors handle guild fringes or residuals.
The incumbent
Who owns this market and who is coming for it. Fields a screen never reached say so rather than guessing.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
The field
Every vendor named on this record, and what each one discloses. Most disclose nothing, which is why the market is not sized.
Competitor set · 4 named · 0 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entertainment Partners (Movie Magic, SmartStudio, EP Canada)B | not disclosed | — | Acquired by TPG Capital (agreement 2019-03-26, terms undisclosed). Payroll, residuals, incentives, Movie Magic Budgeting/Scheduling; Canadian arm says it has served productions 'since 1976' |
| Cast & Crew (PSL+, Cast & Crew Canada)B | not disclosed | — | EQT bought it from Silver Lake (Dec 2018). Founded 1976, Burbank. Added Media Services (2020), TEAM (2021), Backstage (2022); Toronto and Vancouver offices |
| WrapbookB | not disclosed | — | Digital EOR payroll and production accounting. $100M Series B at $1B (2021, Tiger Global), then $20M at $750M (2024, Bessemer). Engineering in Ontario |
| GreenSlateC | not disclosed | — | Third full-service payroll and accounting house (US, Canada, UK, Australia). Bought Vancouver's Circus, Sept 2025; ownership and funding not stated on its site |
Nobody here publishes revenue. The market is not sized for that reason — an estimate built on nothing would only look like knowledge.
Startups & challengers
Newer and smaller vendors going at the incumbent — funded challengers first. Named, not researched to the depth of the field above; a company with a page here links to it.
| Company | Stage | What it does | Raised |
|---|---|---|---|
| RollCredits | Funded challenger | Production spend management: p-cards with cashback, AI receipt entry, budget tracking, reconciliation, EOR payroll | $3m |
| Circus | Startup | Vancouver onboarding and timecard app (digital start packs, QR codes); acquired by GreenSlate Sept 2025 | — |
| LÜK Network | Scrappy competitor | 1099 freelancer payroll and workers' comp for shoots, plus model booking and talent casting | — |
Evidence
Evidence. Vendor revenue and market size UNVERIFIED: EP, Cast & Crew and GreenSlate are private and publish no revenue, and no share figure was sourced. Ownership [B]: TPG's own release (2019-03-26) on acquiring EP, opened. Silver Lake's notice (2018-12-10) on EQT VIII buying Cast & Crew, opened. MediaPost (2022-02-16) on Cast & Crew agreeing to buy Backstage Holdings, which calls EQT the majority owner, opened. The Media Services (2020) and TEAM (2021) acquisitions appeared in search results only and were not opened [C]. Wrapbook [B]: BetaKit (2021-11-10) and Wrapbook's own posts (2021-11-10 Series B; 2024-09-24 Bessemer, $20M at $750M) were opened. The $151M total is the sum of disclosed rounds, not a company-stated total. Wrapbook's EOR page was opened and quoted [C, vendor]. GreenSlate–Circus [B for the deal, C for the claims]: GreenSlate's release (2025-09-16) was opened. Terms are undisclosed, and the claims of 70% of Canada's film/TV workforce and 350,000 start packs are the vendor's own. Circus's pre-seed is from Expa's post (2021-11-12), opened, amount undisclosed. RollCredits' $3M seed led by Bienville Capital is from The Artemis Fund's post (2024-08-19), opened. The employer-of-record mechanics and the 11-unions figure come from Canadian HR Reporter (2005-09-12), an interview with EP Canada's president, opened. It is old, but it describes the structure, not a number that moves. EP Canada and Cast & Crew Canada pages were opened 2026-10-10: Cast & Crew Canada calls itself 'the Canada entertainment industry's leading supplier of payroll and residuals' [C, vendor]. Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline route bots to a paid gateway (TollBit) and were not used; Business Wire timed out. Verify before acting.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
Non-profit trade body for the producing team in film, TV and emerging media; home page says the community is 'more than 8,400 strong'. Publishes Produced By magazine and runs the Produced By Conference.
Provincial agency, not a membership body. It administers B.C.'s labour-based motion picture tax credits and the BC Film Commission, which is why payroll houses there also sell incentive administration.
The Banff World Media Festival site redirects to a Playback (playbackonline.ca) host that returned a bot challenge. CMPA (cmpa.ca) and AMPTP (amptp.org) returned 403. None of these three are listed. Union bodies (IATSE, ACTRA, SAG-AFTRA) represent the workers, not the buyer, so they are left out.
The businesses it sells to
Operating-business records filed along the same branch of NAICS — the customers of this software, screened as businesses in their own right.
No operating-business record has been written along this branch yet. The base industry report says what the subsector typically runs on.