The old cliche that the fastest way to lose money is to invest in British films has finally been proved wrong. Figures released for the first time by the UK Film Council show that British cinema - which has haemorrhaged lottery money in the past - is not only beginning to pay for itself, it is reaping millions of pounds in profits.
Around £13m of lottery funds invested in 20 films in the past three years has generated £125m at the box office - an average £9m return on every £1m spent. British films are now bettering the Hollywood maxim that only one in 10 films released will be a hit.
Bend It Like Beckham, last year's surprise blockbuster, which packed cinemas in the US, Italy and France, has made almost £40m at the world box office. It took £945,043 in lottery support but has pumped an "extremely unusual" £1.4m back into the pot within a year.
The Oscar and Bafta-winning Gosford Park has repaid its £2m lottery investment and made £49m at the box office.
The Magdalene Sisters, which received £620,000 from the lottery, has taken £9.5m, filling Italian cinemas after winning the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival.
Almost half the 20 Film Council films released since 2000 have made more than £1m at the box office. These include the £10m taken by last year's The Importance of Being Earnest and healthy sums for Anita and Me, L'Homme du Train and the Golden Bear winner Bloody Sunday.
The Film Council's figures do not even include several other successes produced by lottery franchise companies, including the low-budget horror film 28 Days Later and Manchester-set 24-Hour Party People.
Only a handful of films have yet to recoup 10% of their investment, including Alex Cox's Revengers Tragedy, which the Film Council says was made for the new cinema fund, which aims to promote talent, not reap profits. Even Crush, one of the UK's biggest critical raspberries, recouped £776,000 of its £875,000 lottery cash.
The Film Council, headed by the director Sir Alan Parker, must hope the new figures will silence its critics. Detractors have argued that British film production was too risky an enterprise to be lavished with lottery money. Before the Film Council was born in April 2000, the Arts Council of England heaped £100m of lottery money on 200 films, with a return of only £6m.
Recently Parker's team has been criticised for playing safe. Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton raged that the organisation would not bail them out when private backers pulled out of their film Young Adam.
The Film Council refused to give the film more than its allocated £560,000 in lottery money. Since its release, it has grossed £530,248 in the UK.
John Woodward, the Film Council's chief executive, said: "While the increasing number of lottery-funded critical and box-office successes are welcome there is still a long way to go. The release of many UK films has been restricted owing to market conditions, limiting the number of people who actually have the opportunity to see what are often imaginative and entertaining films."
