BBC creative director Alan Yentob has insisted the corporation's plan to invest extra money in feature films will not lead to it "squandering $80m" on flop movies and having to cancel EastEnders as a result.
Mr Yentob described as a "prudent investment" the extra £10m a year the BBC aims to spend on film production and rights acquisition for its TV channels from 2007.
The figure could rise to £30m a year over the course of the BBC's next 10-year charter from 2007, depending on the success of early investments, which form part of a new alliance between the corporation and the UK Film Council to back and promote British movies.
"This is a grown-up arrangement [with the UK Film Council]. We have got to get value for the licence fee payer - we are not a charity," Mr Yentob said.
"We want to support and stimulate the UK film industry and deliver new talent. There is great potential here, but we are not going to squander $80m on a film and then have to cancel EastEnders."
The head of BBC Films, David Thompson, said the corporation would also be trying to avoid the pitfalls encountered by Channel 4's attempt to establish a British film studio to rival Hollywood with FilmFour, which ended in expensive failure four years ago.
"We are not going to replicate the FilmFour model, which took too many commercial risks," Mr Thompson added.
He said BBC Films would continue to invest enough money in projects to allow it to take creative risks, but not so much that it was left financially exposed by box office flops.
Creative freedom
But Mr Thompson said that the extra money for BBC Films would allow it greater freedom to invest in promising projects, where in the past it had missed out.
"We wanted to do Shaun of the Dead, but didn't have the resources at our grasp, so it went to Working Title. The new money will allow us to seize opportunities like that," he said.
Mr Thompson added that the new cash would also allow BBC Films to get involved in some projects with bigger budgets - up to £20m, rather than £4m or £5m.
He is currently developing feature film projects based on BBC TV dramas Edge of Darkness and The Other Boleyn Girl, which fall into the £20m budget category.
The BBC's plans to boost investment in UK films is dependent on getting a generous enough licence fee settlement.
But if that is achieved, from April 2007 an extra £5m will be pumped into movie production arm BBC Films' budget, which is currently around £10m a year.
The BBC is upping its film development budget by £500,000 this year in order to start work on projects that could benefit from the injection of extra production spend from 2007.
A further £5m boost in film production funding is then planned from April 2008, provided the first year of extra cash is deemed a success.
On the TV rights acquisition side, the initial extra £5m a year is slated to grow over the course of the BBC's next 10-year charter.
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