10 Great Movies That Audiences Originally Hated

It sounds improbable, given the film's value these days, but The Shawshank Redemption failed at the box office. Its returns were meager considering the film's expectations and audiences did not show for it. At least not in cinemas.

Rather cleverly, studio higher-ups shipped 320,000 rental copies around the country and it took a short time for the film to become the most rented movie that season. That led to a quick re-evaluation of the film's true merits.

Of course, the publicity blitz did not stop there and Shawshank is now famous for being on television regularly, which again was entirely intentional. Warner Bros. made distribution deals with channels to get the film out to viewers consistently. it worked, to say the least.