TED TURNER BOOSTED OBSCURE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION

Writer-director Frank Darabont has credited Ted Turner for rescuing The Shawshank Redemption from obscurity and turning it into one of the most popular movies ever produced. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Darabont, who adapted the screenplay from a novella by Stephen King and directed the film, noted that Turner took cable rights to the film in 1997 and promptly made it an anchor of Turner Broadcasting’s “New Classics” campaign, then saw to it that the film ran frequently on TNT and other Turner networks. “Mr. Turner, bless his heart, chose to show the movie every five minutes,” Darabont told the Journal. Users of the IMDb website now rate it as the best movie ever made, an especially significant achievement inasmuch as it flopped when it opened theatrically, earning just $18 million at the box office. The Journal calculates that over the past 20 years, the film has brought in more than $100 million from box-office, home-video, and TV licensing. And it still has a lot more potential to earn money for Time Warner, which acquired Turner Broadcasting in 1996. Like some other valuable properties, the Journal observed, Shawshank is still not available for streaming on Netflix.