32 years ago today, The Shawshank Redemption opened and almost nobody showed up.
$25 million budget. About $16 million back on the first run. Seven Oscar nominations. Zero wins. Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction ate the fall of 1994.
Then Warner shipped over 320,000 VHS rental copies — a gamble on a theatrical flop — and it became the most rented video of 1995. TNT put it on loop. IMDb voters parked it at #1. In 2015 the Library of Congress filed it in the National Film Registry.
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."