And yet, if you go to the IMDb, the greatest film of all time is a fairly somber, 142-minute prison drama where one of the most dramatic moments comes when the lead character silently lets rain wash excrement off him, standing in a deliberately Christlike pose. Aside from that example, fans of filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, and the like are often championing distinctively original, singular filmmaking styles, characters, and dialogue. The #ReleaseTheSnyderCut fans have sided with two of the biggest names (Batman and Superman) in superhero culture, and a director known for ultra-stylized filmmaking. Perhaps the most surprising element of The Shawshank Redemption 's continued fame is that it's not the flashiest film to have amassed a passionate fanbase online. As Bob Gunton (who plays the sadistic warden of Shawshank Prison) said during the film's 20th-anniversary coverage, he gets residuals even now for the film by the film's tenth anniversary, those residuals neared six figures. The film's undeniable popularity has translated to a genuinely solid paycheck for even its supporting actors. In 2013, according to a research firm, the film took up more than 150 hours of airtime, tying Scarface and coming in right behind Mrs. The film was "inducted" into the New Classics series on TNT soon after it began airing on the network, and has since become as much a staple as any other film you could think of. There was a time in the late 1990s and early 2000s when it felt as if The Shawshank Redemption was airing on TNT or TBS (another cable network owned by Turner) basically all the time. In an era before streaming, this was perhaps the most important way for the film's life to be extended and expanded. Two years later, the film's broadcast rights were snatched up by TNT - unsurprising, as the cable network was owned at the time by Ted Turner, the same man whose company had, in 1993, bought Castle Rock Entertainment, which produced Shawshank. essentially force-fed the film to the masses, and Shawshank became one of the top-selling VHS titles of 1995. At the time, that amount was high - especially since the film itself didn't seem to merit such an amount of home media. Despite its weak box office, Warner Bros., which was in charge of the film's home-media strategy, ordered more than 300,000 VHS copies to video stores across the country. For Shawshank, the road to becoming one of the top films of all time (at least according to some swathes of the Internet) was related to two key things: video rentals and cable-TV airings. In 2019, it may be hard to imagine a prison drama being released, getting a tepid box-office reaction in spite of Oscar nominations, and eventually becoming one of the most beloved films of all time. But its true rise to fame began soon after. Though the film didn't win any Oscars, the nominations themselves seemed like a big enough victory. Despite its weak showing at the box office, Shawshank received seven Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. Perhaps it's fitting that a film with the word "redemption" in the title was itself redeemed over time, getting a second life after its theatrical release. At first glance, Shawshank was a mild flop, in spite of its positive reviews. All of these details are likely why, when The Shawshank Redemption left theaters in November of 1994, it had only grossed $16 million domestically against a budget of $25 million. Shawshank was from a first-time feature director, Frank Darabont it was released through the mid-tier studio Castle Rock and it had the misfortune to open in the fall of 1994 opposite the much buzzier and instantly-beloved film Pulp Fiction. Shawshank was a film with an almost entirely all-male cast, led by two well-respected actors, Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, who were not known as box-office smashes. However, the long-titled story of an aloof banker serving a double-murder sentence in a New England prison, all while maintaining his innocence, didn't automatically sound like a story from the guy behind Cujo and The Shining. On one hand, it was based on a story from one of the most famous living writers. Shawshank, an adaptation of the Stephen King short story "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," was not the kind of film that felt like a home-run from the outside in. Today marks the 25th anniversary of a film that, when it was released, didn't seem like it was going to find its way onto a lot of people's lists of the best films ever made, let alone as the best ever.
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