13 Things You Didn't Know About Stephen King
4. He Wrote The Greatest Movie Of All Time
One of both the best and worst kept secrets of Hollywood, Stephen King actually wrote the original novella that 1994's Academy Award-nominated The Shawshank Redemption is based on: Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.
Whether Shawshank is the greatest movie of all time is up for debate, but it was certainly voted so in Empire magazine's 2006 poll of over 20,000 readers (beating The Empire Strikes Back for the title slot).
Nonetheless, the novella, published in 1982, has received little to none of this popularity, with many still not even knowing that King's story was the genesis for this timeless masterpiece of cinema. The trail doesn't go cold there, however, as the novella itself has been said to be an adaptation of (short story master) Leo Tolstoy's God Sees the Truth, But Waits.