Lights, camera, tax break The producer churning out flops funded by Treasury

Only the geekiest film buffs will have heard of Alan Latham, but he is one of the UK's most prolific movie producers.

- Simon Goodley George Turner

Credited on 81 releases since 1996 according to the online film database IMDb, Latham has been behind a string of barely known films starring some well-known actors.

These include 2019's For Love or Money, a romcom with a cameo by Four Weddings and a Funeral's Anna Chancellor; Gatecrash, a 2020 thriller featuring Samuel West (All Creatures Great and Small, Slow Horses, The Crown); and the 2019 sci-fi mystery Dark Encounter, starring Laura Fraser (Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad).

None is among those actors' greatest triumphs: the top-ranked scores 5.6 out of 10 on IMDb, while the Los Angeles Times called For Love or Money an "uninspired Britcom" with a "nod to the classic Four Weddings and a Funeral, but none of the grace". Yet each film shares an intriguing backstory.

Compare internal documents seen by the Guardian with financial records filed by the films' holding companies, and it is tempting to guess how Latham has shrugged off so much commercial and artistic disappointment to go on operating in the business on such a scale.

The producer's movies, it seems, have been funded almost entirely by the UK taxpayer.

Film-making and tax have long had an uneasy relationship in the UK - as illustrated by past media storms involving celebrities investing in carefully structured schemes that resulted in losses that could be offset against income tax.

While some of these schemes were found by HMRC not to be "legitimate investments", there are good reasons for governments to assist filmmakers, which explains why Donald Trump has threatened to impose steep tariffs on films made outside the US.