Wrapbook Buys Cinapse, Forging a Unified Hollywood Production Platform

LOS ANGELES, CA – December 08, 2025 – In a strategic move poised to reshape the operational backbone of film and television production, payroll and accounting platform Wrapbook announced today its acquisition of Cinapse, a modern scheduling software used by major studios. The deal directly targets a decades-old inefficiency in Hollywood: the deep chasm between creative planning and financial execution.

For years, the assistant director’s schedule and the production accountant’s ledger have existed in separate digital universes. This acquisition promises to merge them, creating a unified back-office ecosystem where a change in the shoot day schedule can be instantly reflected in budget actuals and payroll forecasts. This integration aims to close the loop from schedule to spend, providing producers with an unprecedented level of real-time control.

"Cinapse and Wrapbook share a vision for how modern productions should operate as fully connected, collaborative and efficient," said Herman Phillips, Co-Founder and CEO of Cinapse, who will join Wrapbook as Director & GM of Scheduling. "Together, we're building what every filmmaker and studio has wanted for decades: one seamless system that connects scheduling, budgeting, and payroll from prep to wrap."

Dismantling the Silos

The traditional production workflow has long been a study in fragmentation. A production’s schedule, the foundational document dictating cast, crew, and location needs, has historically been managed in dedicated software like the industry-standard Movie Magic Scheduling. This powerful but often cumbersome desktop application operates in isolation, requiring manual data exports and communication to inform the financial teams who manage payroll and expenses in entirely different systems.

This disconnect creates significant administrative friction. Assistant Directors (ADs) and production managers spend countless hours translating schedule changes into reports for other departments. Accountants then manually reconcile this information against payroll data and purchase orders, a process ripe for human error and delays. A decision to add a shooting day or switch locations triggers a cascade of manual updates, leaving producers without a clear, immediate picture of the financial consequences.

Cinapse was built to solve the first half of this problem. Emerging as a cloud-native, collaborative challenger to legacy tools, it allows multiple users—from the AD to the director to department heads—to access and modify the schedule in real time. Its success on high-profile productions like HBO's Euphoria and Amazon's The Boys underscores the industry's hunger for more dynamic, connected tools.

By integrating Cinapse’s real-time scheduling technology with Wrapbook’s AI-enabled financial engine, the combined entity aims to eliminate these information silos entirely. The vision is a single source of truth where scheduling data flows seamlessly into payroll processing, timecard verification, and production accounting, transforming a series of disjointed tasks into a fluid, automated workflow.

A Strategic Play for the Connected Back Office

This acquisition is more than a simple product line extension; it represents a significant strategic consolidation in the competitive entertainment technology market. Wrapbook is making a definitive play to become the central operating system for production, challenging the long-held dominance of established players like Entertainment Partners and Cast & Crew, whose offerings, while comprehensive, often consist of siloed legacy products.

The move mirrors a broader trend across enterprise software, where customers are increasingly favoring integrated platforms over a patchwork of single-purpose applications. Wrapbook’s CEO, Ali Javid, emphasized the strategic imperative behind the deal. "This acquisition isn't about expanding for expansion's sake—it's about aligning two mission-critical workflows," he stated. "Together, we're redefining how productions plan and track every dollar of their creative process."

Wrapbook has been steadily building towards this vision, enhancing its core payroll platform with features like automated accounts payable and AI-powered compliance verification. The addition of Cinapse's best-in-class scheduling capabilities accelerates this roadmap dramatically, giving Wrapbook a powerful competitive differentiator. The company is betting that productions will choose the efficiency of a single, integrated system over the familiar but fragmented toolsets of the past.

This strategy is backed by significant market momentum and investor confidence. The global market for digital media production software is estimated at over $6 billion in 2025 and is projected to nearly double by 2032, driven by the content boom and a demand for greater operational efficiency. By creating a truly end-to-end solution, Wrapbook is positioning itself to capture a substantial share of this growing market.

From Data Points to Creative Empowerment

While the immediate benefits of the acquisition are operational—time saved, errors reduced, and budgets clarified—the long-term impact may be most profoundly felt in the creative sphere. By automating administrative burdens and providing clear, instantaneous financial feedback, the integrated platform promises to free up filmmakers to focus on what matters most: storytelling.

Producers and directors often make critical creative decisions under immense time and budget pressure, frequently operating with incomplete financial information. The ability to model the cost implications of a scheduling change in real time—for instance, understanding the overtime impact of extending a scene or the savings from combining two locations—is a powerful tool. It transforms the budget from a static document into a dynamic creative resource.

This technological shift empowers producers to be more agile and informed, fostering an environment where creative ambition can be more effectively balanced with financial reality. The goal, as articulated by Cinapse's Herman Phillips, is to provide tools that "restore control over time, money, and creativity."

With Cinapse already trusted by studios like Netflix, Disney, and Apple TV, the integrated Wrapbook platform has a ready-made audience of the industry's most prolific content creators. As productions continue to grow in scale and complexity, the demand for intelligent, unified management systems will only intensify. This acquisition places Wrapbook at the forefront of that evolution, offering not just a more efficient back office, but a more empowered and creatively liberated production process.