Kate Winslet is being lined up to voice the leading role in a series about a pride of lions which will combine natural history film with computer-generated images.
The BBC is in talks with the star of Titanic to play Suki, a "young, rebellious" lion in a film being portrayed as a technological breakthrough for television drama.
Helen Mirren and Sean Bean have already been signed up to voice leading characters in Pride, which is being made by combining specially commissioned footage of real lions with computer animation to "humanise" the characters.
The series is being scripted by Simon Nye, who wrote Men Behaving Badly. The natural history footage is by John Downer, who was behind the acclaimed documentary Lions: Spy in the Den. It will show how the lions cope when they come into conflict with another pride.
Mirren will play Suki's mother Macheeba, the matriarch of the pride. Bean will be the voice of Dark, Suki's "dangerous yet magnetic suitor".
Nye, who has also dramatised The Railway Children and Pollyanna, said the film would be a "fusion of comedy, drama and natural history".
Downer said the film builds on practices used by Hollywood animations: "This genre is a completely new thing for television, in the manner of Babe, using real animals and animation techniques.
"The main story focuses on a pride of lions, fantastic, unique animals, who live in human-type set-ups. They defend each other and form allegiances. It's more biologically accurate than The Lion King, and the starting point is natural history."
Filming for Pride, a co-production between the BBC and America's A&E Networks, has already taken place in the African savannah, with producers seeking footage that corresponds to a storyboard drawn up by Nye.
It is produced by Christopher Hall, who was also behind previous BBC epics Hound of the Baskervilles and The Lost World.
The animation is being provided by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, which made The Muppets.
Jane Tranter, controller of drama commissioning at the BBC, said: "Pride, like The Canterbury Tales, is part of a growing slate of original, ambitious pieces for BBC1 that work alongside our new and established popular dramas. It fuses the BBC's core strengths with our desire to extend drama into new areas."
Like The Canterbury Tales, also in production for the BBC, Pride is intended as a high-profile, one-off drama which will give the corporation kudos in the run-up to the renewal of its royal charter.
It is hoped Pride will be ready for broadcast by Christmas or Easter 2004.
