Frank Darabont purchased the film rights to Stephen King's novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption for five thousand dollars in 1987. He spent eight weeks crafting the screenplay starting five years later.
Principal photography took place over three months between June and August 1993 at the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio. Interior scenes were shot on a sound stage built inside a nearby shuttered Westinghouse Electric factory while the beach reunion scene was filmed at Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge on Saint Croix.
The Shawshank Redemption began a limited North American release on the 23rd of September 1994 and closed in late November 1994 with an approximate total gross of sixteen million dollars. A re-release between February and March earned a further twelve million dollars bringing the worldwide total to seventy-three point three million dollars.
Morgan Freeman was cast as Ellis Boyd Red Redding at the suggestion of producer Liz Glotzer ignoring the novella's description of Red as a white Irishman. Freeman opted not to research incarceration stating that men do not change once they are inside such a situation.
In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry. It has been the number-one film on IMDb's user-generated Top 250 since 2008 when it surpassed The Godfather.