re: Is Shawshank Redemption the best box office bomb of all time?

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My godfather has a theory that it flopped at the box office because of its title.

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I think the film bombed due to the lack of women. It was a movie set in a prison. There were 54 credited actors in The Shawshank Redemption and only four of them were women, all of whom had very brief bit parts. It was a big sausage fest. Also, the two primary actors in the film really doesn't have leading man looks. So women wouldn't be interested in watching the film because there's no female characters or attractive leading men and younger males wouldn't be interested because there's no women to oogle over. Plus the film was rated R so it wasn't a film that people could take their entire family to watch. There was a very limited targeted audience for the film.

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My godfather has a theory that it flopped at the box office because of its title.

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This is exactly the reason Morgan Freeman gave. He said word of mouth is the most important thing. People couldn’t remember what it was called after they saw it to tell people. Source: Graham Norton show.