All Elite Wrestling is officially coming to TNT to break up the network’s weekly double feature of 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption. That means you’ll be getting two full hours of AEW action sandwiched between the dulcet tones of Morgan Freeman talking about Andy Dufresne. ALL RIGHT!
“We feel our weekly viewers of Shawshank Redemption will welcome the in-ring drama that AEW provides,” said TNT programming representative, Warren Norton.
Norton told the press that, much like in the movie (which airs on the network at least 17 times in any 72-hour period), Cody Rhodes proverbially crawled through a two-mile river of shit (READ: his WWE career) to thrive in this new venture. Similarly, The Young Bucks were wrongly convicted by WWE and other old-school wrestling aficionados of killing the business.
“The parallels are uncanny,” Norton said. “And our core demographic of people flipping channels, not really finding anything good, and then just settling on Shawshank because they don’t like the episode of Law & Order: SVU currently playing on USA is going to love it.”
TNT representatives also announced that, to welcome AEW to the network, they plan to air an extra bonus presentation of Shawshank after the second one already slated on the schedule. That’s right! Come October 2nd, you can settle in for a night of The Shawshank Redemption (6:00-8:00 P.M. ET), AEW’s inaugural live show (8:00-10:00 P.M. ET), The Shawshank Redemption (10:00-12:00 A.M. ET), and finally, The Shawshank Redemption (12:00-2:00 A.M. ET). Additionally, to further synergize these brands, AEW plans to produce t-shirts with the tagline, “Get Busy Wrestling Or Get Busy Dying” (available for purchase on their online store).
The network will also reportedly air Bones on loop in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen throughout the duration of all of the above.
Images: TNT, AEW, Wikimedia/Tabercil, Castle Rock Entertainment