The Pilgrims of The Shawshank Redemption

Twenty-five years since it opened as a box office flop, The Shawshank Redemption has become a cinematic touchstone, a mainstay in cable repeats, and the long-running best movie of all time as determined by IMDb’s users. Some fans take the whole thing even further—between 2013 and 2018, 600,000 people from around the world visited Mansfield, Ohio, where the movie was filmed. “I realize it’s only a movie, but it’s very, very real to me,” said Rick Ayres, one of those visitors. Brendan Bures talks to those fans, the Ohioans who feel part of movie history, and director Frank Darabont, who returned to Mansfield last summer for the first time since shooting the movie. “I turned 60 this year. I was 34 when we shot this movie. It’s just like, How did that happen?”
Elsewhere in HWD, Yohana Desta argues that the Emma Stone–led Cruella (now with Killing Eve star Kirby Howell-Baptiste) might be the cure to reboot fatigue, Laura Bradley catches up on late-night TV’s impeachment-palooza, and Sonia Saraiya wonders how it took until Fleabag’s second season for the show to make such a huge cultural impact.