According to The Hollywood Reporter, novice screenwriter Ed Whitmore has been chosen to write the script for Warner Bros. film “The Lost Years of Merlin”.

Whitmore, a script reader for Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Productions, landed the gig of writing for Warner Bros. after years of hard work and a big break. According to the article, Whitmore studied at Oxford and was a journalist for the Times of London. After his newspaper job, he went to UCLA’s screenwriting program and became a reader for ICM, then for Harpo. He wrote scripts in his free time.

Whitmore was represented by Circle of Confusion, but none of his scripts sold. However, he kept trying. “If it didn’t work out, I’d just move to the next one,” he said. “I’d just try to persevere. It’s something I really wanted to do, even when it got hard.”

Last year, he wrote a script called “Powell”, which related the events (both fact and fiction) leading up to now-retired General Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations arguing for the Iraq war. The script created enough buzz that he signed with WME for representation six weeks ago, and when he happened to meet with executives from Warner Bros. and De Line productions, that led to his pitch and ultimate sale of “Merlin”.

You can read the full Cinderella-esque story here. Congratulations, Whitmore!