You know how we keep pointing out that Warner Bros. – and every other studio – is on the lookout for the next Harry Potter? Well, the company has clearly decided that what it really needs to fill the Potter-shaped hole in its heart is another adventure featuring a famous young wizard and has plucked the film rights to T.A. Barron’s young adult novel The Lost Years Of Merlin from the murky depths of development hell.
Warners has now hired Ed Whitworth, who, in between trying to sell spec scripts, has been paying the bills working as a reader for Oprah Winfrey’s company Harpo Productions, to take the first crack at getting the book on screen.
Green Lantern producer Donald De Line is overseeing the film, which will essentially tell a new origin story about Merlin as a boy washed up in Wales with no memory of who he is and how he got there. It’ll follow him mastering his magical powers and becoming the man to help King Arthur.
Paramount once held the rights to the book, but despite Simon Kinberg trying to get it made, the studio never quite found the right tone and the rights then lapsed.
Now Warners will be hoping that it can find the magic and, with luck, pull a new franchise out of the stone...