10 Movies Everyone Thinks Are Based On A True Story (But Aren't)

10. The Shawshank Redemption

Some movies just have a heft to them that makes us assume they're at least loosely based on true events, and that's absolutely the case with The Shawshank Redemption.

The iconic prison drama, in which falsely imprisoned banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) eventually manages to tunnel his way to freedom, has a "stranger than fiction" quality to it that smacks of real-life inspiration.

Many have evidently taken that for granted, despite the fact that the movie is adapted from Stephen King's 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which has no rooting in reality whatsoever.

As much as we'd all like to believe that such an astonishing tale of triumph over adversity came from real life, and that the iconic cast of characters were people who actually lived, it was instead all spawned from the mind of one of our finest authors.

The Shawshank Redemption's prestige clout and just-believable-enough story certainly make it feel like a ripped-from-the-headlines biopic, but alas, it's entirely original.