FILM · 1994 · USA
The Shawshank Redemption
- Directed by
- Frank Darabont
- Runtime
- 142 min
- Studio
- Castle Rock Entertainment
40 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
Summary: TMDB
All facts (40)
- #001
Frank Darabont's first collaboration with Stephen King came in 1983, when he adapted the Night Shift story "The Woman in the Room" as a short film after buying the rights for $1.
- #002
Darabont paid Stephen King $5,000 for the rights to adapt Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, a 96-page novella from King's 1982 collection Different Seasons.
- #003
Stephen King did not see how a story centered on Red reflecting on his fellow prisoner Andy could become a feature film, but Frank Darabont considered the adaptation "obvious".
- #004
Stephen King never cashed Frank Darabont's $5,000 check; he framed it and sent it back with a note reading, "In case you ever need bail money. Love, Steve".
- #005
Frank Darabont wrote the screenplay for The Shawshank Redemption over an eight-week period, five years after first encountering the source material.
- #006
Contains a major spoiler — show
Darabont merged several warden figures from King's story into a single warden character to act as the film's main antagonist, and had Tommy murdered on that warden's orders rather than transferred as in the novella.
- #007
Darabont cited Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life, Goodfellas and John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz as inspirations, and described The Shawshank Redemption as closer to a tall tale than a prison movie.
- #008
Liz Glotzer, then a producer at Castle Rock Entertainment, was so drawn to prison stories and to Frank Darabont's script that she threatened to leave the company unless it produced The Shawshank Redemption.
- #009
Rob Reiner, a Castle Rock Entertainment co-founder and director, liked Darabont's script and offered him between $2.4 million and $3 million to let Reiner direct The Shawshank Redemption himself.
- #010
At the time of The Shawshank Redemption's development, prison-based films were not regarded as likely box-office successes.
- #011
Castle Rock Entertainment offered to finance any other film Frank Darabont wanted to develop, but he chose to remain the director of The Shawshank Redemption. In a 2014 Variety interview, Darabont said, "you can continue to defer your dreams in exchange for money and, you know, die without ever having done the thing you set out to do".
- #012
Frank Darabont considered Castle Rock Entertainment's offer to finance another film, citing his upbringing in poverty in Los Angeles and a belief that accepting it would elevate his standing in the industry. He also noted that Castle Rock Entertainment could have contractually fired him and given The Shawshank Redemption to Rob Reiner anyway.
- #013
Rob Reiner served as Frank Darabont's mentor on The Shawshank Redemption instead of directing the film himself.
- #014
Within two weeks of Frank Darabont showing the script to Castle Rock Entertainment, The Shawshank Redemption had a $25 million budget, and pre-production began in January 1993. Darabont received a $750,000 screenwriting and directing salary plus a percentage of the net profits.
- #015
Morgan Freeman was cast in The Shawshank Redemption at the suggestion of producer Liz Glotzer, who disregarded the novella's description of the character Red as a white Irishman.
- #016
In The Shawshank Redemption, Morgan Freeman's character alludes to the casting choice when Andy asks why he is called Red, answering, "Maybe it's because I'm Irish".
- #017
Morgan Freeman chose not to research his role in The Shawshank Redemption, saying that playing an incarcerated person requires no specific knowledge of incarceration because men do not change and simply toe whatever line they have to.
- #018
Director Frank Darabont knew of Morgan Freeman from Freeman's minor role in the 1980 prison drama Brubaker, while Tim Robbins was excited to work with Freeman after growing up watching him on the children's television show The Electric Company.
- #019
Frank Darabont initially considered Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall for the role of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, but both were unavailable; Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman were also considered.
- #020
Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and Kevin Costner were offered the role of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption and declined; Hanks was committed to Forrest Gump and Costner to Waterworld. Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage and Charlie Sheen were also considered at different stages.
- #021
Tom Cruise attended table readings of The Shawshank Redemption script but declined to work with the inexperienced Frank Darabont.
- #022
Brad Pitt was initially cast as the young convict Tommy in The Shawshank Redemption but passed because of scheduling difficulties tied to his roles in Legends of the Fall (1994) and Interview with a Vampire, following his sudden fame after Thelma and Louise (1991).
- #023
The role of Tommy went to newcomer Gil Bellows, whom writer-director Frank Darabont said brought a sweetness to the character's toughness.
- #024
James Gandolfini declined the part of the prison rapist Bogs Diamond in The Shawshank Redemption.
- #025
Bob Gunton auditioned for Warden Samuel Norton while filming Demolition Man (1993); because his head was shaved for that role, Darabont and producer Niki Marvin had a wig made so he could record a screen test on a day off, performed with Tim Robbins and filmed by Deakins. Gunton wanted Norton to have hair that could be grayed to show the character's aging, and he wore the wig in the film's early scenes until his own hair regrew.
- #026
Clancy Brown, who played head guard Byron Hadley in The Shawshank Redemption, was offered the chance to speak with former guards through the production's liaison officer but turned it down, believing it would be wrong to suggest his brutal character drew any inspiration from Ohio state correctional officers.
- #027
William Sadler, who portrays Heywood in The Shawshank Redemption, said that Frank Darabont approached him in 1989 on the set of the Tales from the Crypt television series, where Darabont was a writer, about starring in the adaptation he intended to make.
- #028
Morgan Freeman's son Alfonso appears in The Shawshank Redemption in a cameo as a young Red in mug shot photos and as a prisoner shouting "fresh fish" when Andy arrives at Shawshank.
- #029
The Shawshank Redemption's extras included the reformatory's former warden and former inmates as well as active guards from a nearby incarceration facility, and the novella's original title drew several people to audition for the nonexistent role of Rita Hayworth, among them a man in drag clothing.
- #030
The Shawshank Redemption was made on a $25 million budget, with principal photography running over three months between June and August 1993. Filming often demanded workdays of up to 18 hours, six days a week.
- #031
Morgan Freeman described the filming of The Shawshank Redemption as tense, saying the tension was mostly between the cast and director, and he recalled having a bad moment with the director. Freeman also said he sometimes simply refused to perform additional takes.
- #032
Frank Darabont's insistence on multiple takes drew criticism from Morgan Freeman, who saw no discernible differences between them; the scene in which Andy first approaches Red about a rock hammer took nine hours to film, with Freeman throwing and catching a baseball throughout, and the number of takes left him arriving the next day with his arm in a sling.
- #033
The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio, was chosen to stand in for the fictional Shawshank State Penitentiary in Maine in The Shawshank Redemption, with its Gothic-style stone and brick buildings cited as the reason.
- #034
The Ohio State Reformatory had been closed three years before it was used in The Shawshank Redemption, having been shuttered in 1990 due to inhumane living conditions.
- #035
The Shawshank Redemption shot several interior prison scenes, including the admittance rooms and the warden's office, inside the 15-acre reformatory used as the film's prison.
- #036
Because Frank Darabont wanted the inmates' cells to face one another, nearly all cellblock scenes in The Shawshank Redemption were filmed on a set built inside a closed Westinghouse Electric factory.
- #037
The oak tree where Andy leaves his letter to Red in The Shawshank Redemption stood near Malabar Farm State Park in Lucas, Ohio, and was brought down by winds in 2016.
- #038
The beach reunion of Andy and Red in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, was not filmed in Mexico but in the Caribbean, on Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The location used for the 'Zihuatanejo' beach is Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge, a protected area for leatherback sea turtles.
- #039
The prison wood shop scene in The Shawshank Redemption, where Red and other inmates hear The Marriage of Figaro, was shot in Upper Sandusky. That woodshop is now known as the Shawshank Woodshop.
- #040
The opening court scene of The Shawshank Redemption was filmed at the Wyandot County Courthouse in Upper Sandusky.
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