The Shawshank Redemption star Tim Robbins thinks he knows why film flopped in 1994

Tim Robbins has reflected upon The Shawshank Redemption 25 years after it was first released.

The Stephen King adaptation was a failure at the box office upon its release in 1994, but has since been reappraised as a classic and is currently ranked as the most popular film of all time on database IMDb.

Robbins thinks that the reason for its lacklustre performance was due to the title.

“When it came out, and was not well received at the box office, there were various reasons given: “Well, it’s the title, no one can remember the title,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “And that makes sense too, because for years after that film came out, people would come up to me and say, ‘You know, I really liked you in that film Scrimshaw Reduction or Shimmy, Shimmy, Shake or Shankshaw‘ – you know, so many different ways that people got it wrong.”

Robbins, who starred in the film alongside Morgan Freeman, described being a part of the film as an “honour”, saying: “When you’re in a film that is the most popular film of all time, you can scratch that one off the bucket list.

“The kinds of films that I participated in, I was looking at whether they were going to last rather than whether they were going to make a brief splash. And I think the testament of a great film is that it still resonates with people years and years after it was made.”

With a 9.3 out of 10 rating on IMDB, The Shawshank Redemption sits above films including Pulp Fiction, 12 Angry Men and Schindler’s List.

The film’s director, Frank Darabont, recently called its number one placement “surreal” and said he “[finds] it hard to believe” the film is better than The Godfather.

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