By Oliver Poole

New works have been commissioned and old favourites revived as the BBC tackles the film industry. Oliver Poole reports

A LAVISH dramatisation of the early years of Mary, Queen of Scots, and a feature-length updated version of Dr Who will be among the highlights of the BBC's multi-million bid to become a big player in the film industry, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

The corporation has also taken a significant stake in a film based on Tomb Raider, the computer game featuring the character Lara Croft. The new projects will benefit from an extra £50 million earmarked for film projects by Greg Dyke, the Director-General of the BBC, who expects success at the Oscars in return.

Dame Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent will star in a film about Iris Murdoch, the author who died last year after a fight against Alzheimer's disease. Alan Yentob, the BBC's creative director, said that Tomb Raider which will star Angelina Jolie as Croft is the biggest film involving the corporation.

He said: "I know the character well because my kids play the game a lot and I am competent at it too."

The BBC's financial investment in the Paramount Pictures project meant that executives from the corporation were able to examine scripts and casting decisions as well as being guaranteed the television rights and a share of the profits. It will be labelled a BBC film at the start of the credits and will be placed on general cinema release in June.

The £20 million film about the turbulent and bloody reign and tragic life of Mary, Queen of Scots, is being made with Sir Sean Connery's production company, Fountainbridge Films. Kate Winslet, the Titanic actress, will be approached to play the title role.

Intended to rival Elizabeth, funded by FilmFour, the film - scripted by the Cracker writer Jimmy McGovern - will focus on the queen's early life, starting when she leaves France aged 19 and ending when she marries her third husband, the Earl of Bothwell.

The plot will revolve around two murders - that of the queen's favoured private secretary David Rizzio, ordered by her second husband Lord Darnley, and that of the womanising Lord Darnley himself.

David Thompson, the head of BBC films, confirmed rumours that there would be a Dr Who film, with a budget expected to be £40 million, and said that filming would start next year. "We are talking to a famous American director and hope to announce his name in the next few months. A British actor will definitely play the Doctor but we have not decided who yet," he said. Filming on Iris, the film based on the book written by John Bayley about his wife's struggle against Alzheimer's, may have to be postponed following the death last week of Dame Judi Dench's husband, Michael Williams.

Directed by Sir Richard Eyre, it will focus first on the courtship between the young author and her future husband, and then her battle against illness in old age.