Radial’s 2025/26 Mandate — and Why 300 Indie Films Just Lost Their Distributor
- Gato Scatena
- Oct 16
- 6 min read
Disclosure: S&R Films is an active seller to Radial, Shout!, and Gravitas. Additionally, S&R also represents select international rights on behalf of Shout! and therefore Radial Entertainment.
There’s a “new” buyer in town called Radial Entertainment, and in this article I will indeed be covering what they’re buying, in what quantity, and MG ranges. But this new buyer isn’t exactly new – it’s the result of a handful of mergers and acquisitions. While Radial is setting itself up for long-term success, they’re not the only story here. The moves that led to its existence have created ripple effects that are both negatively and positively impacting the independent film market in the short term. The long term? Time will tell.
Most sales agents and filmmakers haven’t been paying attention to this shockwave M&A story that’s been unfolding over the past twelve months, but it is important and it does have a major impact on the independent marketplace for films budgeted in the micro-to-$3MM range. And when I say others haven’t been paying attention, I’m not just pulling this out of thin air – as the chess moves started taking place I was asking my colleagues and clients for their thoughts only to receive questions instead of opinions.
This story could literally start in four different places: Oaktree Capital, Shout! Factory (a.k.a. Shout! Studios), Gravitas Ventures, or FilmRise. For chronological purposes, we’ll kick things off with Shout!
Shout! Factory’s History to Present
Shout! Factory launched in 2003 initially as a specialty music label (founded by Richard and Garson Foos of Rhino Records and Bob Emmer of Warner Music and Rhino). Around 2007 they started acquiring high-value TV series (e.g. Blossom, Ninja Turtles, and more). Skipping forward to the 2020's, the company was acquiring and distributing not only classic series and feature IP, but was also acquiring a good number of new release features annually. Shout! was frequently in the same conversations that included Saban, Grindstone (a Lionsgate company), RLJE, and other hitters capable of swinging in the 7-figure+ MG range. Like the aforementioned comparable companies, they put a strong emphasis on genre films. What’s a bit unique about Shout! when compared to the others however, they were leaning in on large library plays (we’ll get more into this later). On the quantity end more recently, Shout! was seen buying around 40 new titles a year – a number also on par with their competition.
Oaktree Capital Shakes It Up
In 2023 Oaktree Capital came in as an investor into Shout!, and in July 2025 they fully acquired the company. The moves that came after are at the core of this article and the “why” it matters to indies. But the “why” Oaktree acquired the company, has very little to do with the new release acquisitions; it has everything to do with the library business and multiplied revenue streams. When a distribution company controls a large library, revenue doors open to them that are otherwise not available to most of their new release distributor competition. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, acquiring competitive new releases can increase the company’s ability to extract maximum value out of their smaller films and older library titles. How does this work?
To start, a large IP library already opened up avenues to Shout! not available to everyone. Namely, their own wholly owned linear channels, and the ability to execute on large-quantity down-stream licensing deals. Shout! owns Mystery Science Theater 3000, much of The Johnny Carson Show, Sesame Street, My Little Pony, Speed Racer, 21 Jump Street (series), and much more. When you tack on an additional 40 new release titles per year, Pay 1 / SVOD licenses present themselves, and those discussions can lead to larger package deals, both for new and library titles. OK, so Shout! was already positioned to extract max value [often out of reach to competitors] from small titles by leaning on valuable IP and new releases. So what happens when Shout! spots another library that’s only earning 25-50% of the revenue it could otherwise earn under their banner? You buy it.
Gravitas Ventures and the Impact of the Film Distributor's Absence
Enter Gravitas Ventures. Gravitas had a different business model. Now that it’s largely defunct, I can say it: their business model was “throw shit against a wall and see what sticks.” Not the most flattering, but it worked for them. At one point they were acquiring a jaw-dropping 360 movies per year! As Tony Piantedosi (previously at Gravitas, now at Vertical) can tell you, the rule of thumb was to buy a movie a day. In the past couple years they scaled back to 300 per year – maybe they needed more vacation days. At first glance this looks like they too were in the library model. Yes they were but for different reasons.
Gravitas had their fair share of strong license deals, but what they lacked was major IP and large new releases that they could leverage for even better deals across their smaller titles. They also didn’t have any real platforms of their own with the exception of Gravitas Movies, their SVOD OTT, which earned very little money for them and their filmmakers.
OK, so back to Shout! Factory, who’s capable of extracting that extra value. In April of 2025 they announced they were acquiring Gravitas Ventures along with their 3,000+ library. And while they publicly stated both brands would continue to operate separately, that’s proven to not be true.
With Gravitas now out of the marketplace, you might think that Shout! [at this point in time in early/mid 2025] would continue to acquire according to the same business model that made Gravitas an acquisition target to begin with, but you’d be dead wrong. What’s important to point out here is that when a buyer acquires a new release film, there’s a lot of up-front expense associated: minimum guarantees, ingestion, QC and patches, marketing assets, delivery costs, license sales overhead, etc. On an average day, Gravitas was spending about $15,000-25,000 in out-the-door expenses just to onboard a new film. But with a 3K+ library where all that money has already been spent, and revenue data for each film acquired over time, the library is more valuable to Shout! than it is to Gravitas itself. All things considered, does it make sense for Shout! to continue acquiring new low-level films at a minimum of $15K expenses a-pop, especially while considering the crowded content marketplace for low-budget features? Hell no.
So, here’s the first major hit to the broad domestic market: a buyer of over 300 indie features per year is gone, and there’s a vacuum that no single buyer is going to fill. That’s 300 theoretically orphaned films [at least] in the first year now that Gravitas is absent.
FilmRise Added to Enhance Revenue
FilmRise, step right up. In July it was announced that Oaktree acquired FilmRise, a move that solidifies all the “why’s” and rounds out the overall library controlled by Shout to over 70,000. That’s a lot of content. But what’s more, FilmRise wasn’t just a library play – they had over 600 FAST channels and AVOD streaming apps. That’s output, and that’s a ton of advertising revenue. The name of this new entity combining all the powers of Shout!, Gravitas, and FilmRise: Radial Entertainment.
Radial Entertainment’s Current Mandate
Here’s what Radial Entertainment is buying in order to feed the beast, including quantity of acquisition, genres & requirements, and MG price-tags.
