The Shawshank Redemption (1994) The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

See also: _Index | Plot Structure (The Shawshank Redemption) | Backbeats (The Shawshank Redemption)

Quick Facts

• Director: Frank Darabont
• Screenplay: Frank Darabont (based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, from the 1982 collection Different Seasons)
• Starring: Tim Robbins (Andy Dufresne), Morgan Freeman (Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding), Bob Gunton (Warden Samuel Norton), Clancy Brown (Captain Byron Hadley), William Sadler (Heywood), Gil Bellows (Tommy Williams), Mark Rolston (Bogs Diamond), James Whitmore (Brooks Hatlen)
• Cinematography: Roger Deakins
• Editor: Richard Francis-Bruce
• Music: Thomas Newman
• Runtime: 142 minutes
• Budget: approximately $25 million
• US Box Office (initial release): approximately $16 million
• Release Date: September 23, 1994 (limited); October 14, 1994 (wide)
• MPAA Rating: R
• Distributor: Columbia Pictures

Overview

A young Maine banker convicted of murdering his wife and her lover serves a double life sentence at Shawshank State Penitentiary, where over nineteen years he carves a tunnel out of his cell wall with a small rock hammer while running the warden's tax-evasion and money-laundering scheme as the prison librarian. The film is narrated in first-person voiceover by his closest friend, Red, a fellow lifer and the prison's smuggler-of-record, whose own arc — three failed parole hearings, one granted, an old man's terror outside the walls, and finally a Greyhound bus to Mexico — runs alongside Andy's. Adapted by Frank Darabont from a Stephen King novella, The Shawshank Redemption underperformed at its 1994 release, was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, and was rehabilitated through cable rotation and home video into one of the most-watched American films of its decade.