Netflix, the video-on-demand service behind Kevin Spacey's House of Cards, is planning a £100m epic about Queen Elizabeth II inspired by Peter Morgan's play, The Audience.

Morgan, who also wrote the 2006 Oscar-winning film, The Queen, will team up with Billy Elliot's Stephen Daldry for the series, called The Crown, which will span the Queen's six decades on the throne.

Helen Mirren played the Queen in both the film and play written by Morgan, with at least three actors tipped to take the role in the Netflix drama.

The US film and TV streaming company is understood to have beaten off competition from the BBC and ITV for the drama.

The Crown would be the first original Netflix production to be made in the UK following the success of its US made House of Cards, which Spacey made with David Fincher, and prison drama Orange is the New Black.

Morgan's acclaimed play The Audience centred around the weekly audiences given by the Queen to prime ministers since her accession to the throne in 1952.

The Crown is expected to chart her reign from the moment she heard of her father George VI's death, to the present day.

The series will also reunite Morgan with award-winning producer Andy Harries, who worked with the writer on The Queen and The Audience.

The series, which is still to be confirmed by Netflix, will be made by independent production company Left Bank Pictures, owned by Sony Pictures Television.

Insiders said the 20-part drama would be as much about the period of history the Queen was on the throne, as it is about the Queen herself.

"The focus will be on politics and political machinations, in much the same was as The Audience focused on the Queen's meetings with the prime minister of the day," said a source.

The drama is described as inspired by The Audience, rather than based on it.

Although Mirren, who won an Oscar for The Queen, went on to star in The Audience, she is not currently tipped for a role in the new TV series.

The Crown will film next year and is expected to be available on Netflix by 2016.

Harries will executive produce the series along with Robert Fox and Matthew Byam Shaw. All three produced Morgan's The Audience.

The drama is another landmark for Netflix, which has a rapidly growing slate of original programming, including horror series Hemlock Grove and its revival of sitcom Arrested Development.

It was House of Cards, the BBC drama remake starring Kevin Spacey and made by David Fincher, that helped put Netflix into millions of living rooms around the world.

The company, which launched in the UK and Ireland in January 2012, now has 46 million paying subscribers globally – around a quarter of them outside of the US – and announced plans this week to launch in six more European countries before the end of the year.

Morgan's other credits include Frost/Nixon, the play which he adapted for the big screen, and his adaptation of David Peace's The Damned United.

An award winning film and theatre director and producer, Daldry's other credits include The Reader and The Hours.

Leftbank and Sony declined to comment.

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