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When Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption was released in theaters back in 1994, the movie was turned out to be a big box office flop. It only brought in $28 million, which is so strange considering the film is now a classic. It's one of my favorite films of all time, but hardly anyone went and saw the damn thing when it was in theaters!
While talking about the film on The Graham Norton Show, actor Morgan Freeman offered his thoughts on why he thought the movie bombed in theaters and he blamed it all the title:
"Tanked at the box office. And the reason for that, of course, is that... the only real marketing movies get, I think, is word of mouth. You can promote it all you want. But if the first few audiences come back and can't say, 'I really saw this great film,' then you're not going to go very far. So people went to see The Shawshank Redemption, and they came back and said, 'Oh, man. I saw this really terrific movie. It's called, um... uh, Shank sham? Shim shock.' One lady saw me in the elevator and she went, 'Oh, I saw you in The Hudsucker Production.' So if you can't get word across, then it just doesn't do well."
It would've been interesting to see if the film would've done better with a different title. What are some alternate titles that you can think of for The Shawshank Redemption that you think might have worked for the film?
