The new Film Council will be "shameless" in trying to do deals with Hollywood studios that ensure that British movies are seen in the multiplexes.
Its chief executive, John Woodward, said the new body, launched yesterday to oversee the spending of £50m a year of lottery and government money, would make no apologies for concentrating on commercial films.
"We are interested in films that really can play in cinemas on a Friday night, and we will not be backing films whose natural home is on television," he said.
Council chairman Alan Parker, the director of Evita and Angela's Ashes, said the "little Englander" mentality had to be ditched if "we are to move away from the cottage industry that we all currently work in".
He said the industry had to embrace Hollywood backers and also work more closely with European producers, who were increasingly moving into English-language film and seeing Britain as a bridge into the American market.
The British Screen office in Los Angeles, which tries to lure American films to shoot in the UK, was being expanded, he said, and £4.2m will be set aside to help European co-productions.
Nearly half of the £22m the council will invest, however, will go into 10 to 12 populist British films a year.
Mr Woodward said the council could invest up to £8m in a single project if they thought it was good enough. A further £6m will go into script development and into improving the "patchy" training industry writers and executives now get.
Even so £5m - more than twice what the British Film Institute was previously allowed to spend - will be set aside for encouraging arthouse films and bringing on new talent.
Last night the first phase of the council's plans to restructure its support for the industry was welcomed by film-makers.
Charles Harris of the New Producers Alliance, which rep resents independent film-makers, said it still had reservations, particularly over the small number of executives who will determine what films were made.
"It is a two rather than three cheers situation. There is no mention of the real underlying problem - distribution and exhibition - which they say will come in their second phase of recommendations in December," he said.
"One of our fears is that they will go for quick and easy options. Nor does anyone really know what a commercial film is. Everyone passed on The Full Monty here and it went to the States. Even Fox, who picked it up there, didn't think it would do any business."
