The Stephen King prison drama bombed commercially on its initial release in 1994, failing to claw back its modest budget. Now, many regard it as a cinematic masterpiece. In 2004, its director Darabont told the BBC about its remarkable reversal of fortune.
When The Shawshank Redemption came out 30 years ago this week, it seemed to have all the ingredients of a box-office smash. After all, it was based on a novella by one of the world's best-selling authors, Stephen King, so it looked as if a ready-made fanbase would be interested in seeing it. Indeed, another story, The Body, taken from the same 1982 collection, Different Seasons, had been turned into a hugely successful movie, Stand by Me, in 1986.
Director and screenwriter Frank Darabont believed that the story was so filmic that in 1987 he bought the rights to adapt it himself. "I found the story, Stephen King's story, so compelling, really, and so touching that to me it was just natural as a movie," he told Stuart Maconie on BBC4 programme The DVD Collection in 2004. The novella told the story of Andy Dufresne, a man convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, and how, through his friendship with fellow inmate Ellis "Red" Redding, he survives, and ultimately triumphs over, the brutally harsh conditions of Shawshank Penitentiary.
And Darabont had found the perfect location to stand in for the merciless, gothic prison. Ohio State Reformatory had opened in 1896 and been active up until 1990 when it closed due to allegation.