10 Critically Acclaimed Films You Never Realised Bombed At The Box Office

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score: 91%

Budget: $25 million

Box Office: $16 Million

It’s hard to believe that the film that has topped IMDb’s Top 250 since 2008 performed so poorly at the box office when it was first released. Despite having since been selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry, The Shawshank Redemption made only $727,000 in its opening weekend, an average of just $22,040 per movie theatre.

The Steven King adaptation (written and directed by The Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont) was pulled from cinemas after a 10 week run, having grossed a total of just $16 million in that time. After an overwhelmingly positive critical response, however, the film was re-released the following year in time for Oscar season, though, while it received nominations in all the major categories, it walked away empty handed.

The film’s second run generated an extra $9 million in box office takings, and a whole lot more money was clawed back through TV licencing, which is thought to have well surpassed the original cost by now, a theory supported by the wealth of character actor Bob Gunton.

Gunton was lucky enough to land the part of the warden in Shawshank, and his relatively small part in the film had earned him a six figure sum by the film’s tenth anniversary in 2004, meaning that stars Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are likely still receiving a substantial residual income for their leading parts in the film even today.