Tim Robbins

Forever grateful to the audience that found Shawshank. It’s the quality that matters and time will be the ultimate arbiter. I hope the same will be true of Code 46, The Secret Life of Words and Catch a Fire.

The Shawshank Redemption flopped in theaters, $16 million worldwide on a $25 million budget, opening weekend just $727,000 in 1994, it disappeared almost immediately. It lost all seven Oscar nominations to Forrest Gump, no awards, no box office, the studio labeled it a failure and the director walked away devastated. Then something quiet started happening, VHS rentals, cable reruns, someone watching it alone on a Tuesday night and calling a friend the next morning. People who watched it told their friends, their friends told more people, it spread slowly, one recommendation at a time, no marketing push just genuine word of mouth. By 2008 it reached number one on IMDb, the audience voted it the greatest film ever made and it has stayed there ever since. It took 14 years to get there, a box office bomb turned into the highest rated film in history, built entirely by viewers long after the studio had already moved on.