Matthew W. Ryan
- Actor
- Writer
Matthew Ryan came late to the entertainment industry. An attorney by profession, he practiced law for eight years in New York before joining HSBC's Global Private Bank, where he spent 20 years, rising to the position as President of its Delaware Trust Company. He retired from his legal and banking career at the end of 2022.
Ryan is the sole writer and owner of the screenplay Aegis for Dreams, for which he obtained Federal copyright protection in 2016. The script tells the story of the complicated relationship between George Washington and his key aide Alexander Hamilton during America's War for Independence. The story has a very high degree of historical accuracy as Ryan painstaking researched the story using original source documentation.
In 2018, Ryan created Aegis for Dreams Foundation, a New York public charity, and donated to this foundation the right to produce and thereafter own the feature film. The IRS, positing that feature films are the sole province of for-profit-filmmakers, and denied the Foundation's application for exemption. As a result, the Foundation brought a successful action in the United States Tax Court challenging this decision, and gained its tax exemption on July 1, 2022. This case was the subject of a July 30, 2022 Forbes. article titled "Best Tax News of the Year: Aegis for Dreams Wins Tax Exempt Status".
If the Foundation is successful in producing the feature film, it is believed that it will be the first feature film produced in a charity.
Ryan is the sole writer and owner of the screenplay Aegis for Dreams, for which he obtained Federal copyright protection in 2016. The script tells the story of the complicated relationship between George Washington and his key aide Alexander Hamilton during America's War for Independence. The story has a very high degree of historical accuracy as Ryan painstaking researched the story using original source documentation.
In 2018, Ryan created Aegis for Dreams Foundation, a New York public charity, and donated to this foundation the right to produce and thereafter own the feature film. The IRS, positing that feature films are the sole province of for-profit-filmmakers, and denied the Foundation's application for exemption. As a result, the Foundation brought a successful action in the United States Tax Court challenging this decision, and gained its tax exemption on July 1, 2022. This case was the subject of a July 30, 2022 Forbes. article titled "Best Tax News of the Year: Aegis for Dreams Wins Tax Exempt Status".
If the Foundation is successful in producing the feature film, it is believed that it will be the first feature film produced in a charity.