The Isle of Man government pumped £60 million into a number of film projects through the island’s Media Development Fund between 2007 and 2016.
But the return on investment was only £32 million, prompting calls in the legislature for an inquiry.
Those investments included co-funding Me and Orson Welles, starring Zac Efron and Christian McKay, which cost the Manx government more than £9 million. (The animated Chico and Rita lost another £2.8 million.)
Despite favorable reviews, Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles was a box office bomb in 2008, costing US$25 million to make and earning just a little more than US$2 million at the box office worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo.
Me and Orson Welles was co-financed by Framestore Features and CinemaNX, a company backed by the Isle of Man film fund. It was shot on the island, London and New York.
House of Keys member Kathleen Beecroft, who had campaigned on a pledge to investigate the Media Development Fund, told the BBC the investments had “not been to the benefit of the people of the island.”
“The pockets of the taxpayer are not so deep that they can afford to have them emptied on projects that should been given proper scrutiny by the parliament before being started,” Beecroft said.
A Manx treasury spokesman told the BBC it would be “premature” to comment until “all the evidence” had been considered.
The Isle of Man is a self-governing British Crown dependency in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. The legislature, or Tynwald, is comprised of two houses, the Legislative Council and House of Keys.
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