Zelnick Media Buys Hollywood Payroll Provider Cast & Crew

Cast & Crew has been helping the entertainment industry since 1976

ZM Capital, the private equity fund of ZelnickMedia, has acquired Cast & Crew Services, a leading provider of payroll services in the entertainment industry.

Headquartered in Burbank, Cast & Crew helps clients with payroll, production accounting software, labor relations and workers compensation among other services. It has field offices in nearly a dozen North American cities, including New York, Atlanta, New Orleans and Toronto.

The entire management team of Cast & Crew will stay with the company, which was previously owned by ABRY Partners. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The ZelnickMedia team values and supports Cast & Crew’s mission to provide the market-leading service and best-in-class products that have defined us for the last 37 years,” Eric Belcher, Cast & Crew’s President and CEO, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to have a partner who will continue to champion our aggressive investments in technology, personnel and workflow processes with a proven track record of taking media and entertainment companies to the next level of success.”

Belcher has a longstanding relationship with Strauss Zelnick, managing partner of ZelnickMedia, dating to their time at Fox. Zelnick was the president and COO of 20th Century Fox and is the former CEO of BMG Entertainment.

As co-founder of ZelnickMedia, he has spearheaded investments in companies like Alloy, producer of successful TV shows and digital properties.

“Cast & Crew has an exceptionally strong and experienced management team, industry-leading service and software, a culture characterized by entrepreneurial spirit and accelerating momentum—all critical to our investment decision,” Zelnick said in a statement. “ZM has followed the Company’s impressive growth and is committed to supporting the Company’s investments in service and innovation for the benefit of customers, employees and other stakeholders.”

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