Hollywood Digest

HARRY POTTER AND THE MAGIC PROFITS

Warner Bros. accountants may be working overtime to count the money coming in from home video sales of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" -- which has already grossed $960 million at the global box office.

Much was made this week about the new holiday weekend box-office record -- $206 million -- but the videocassette and DVD sales are becoming the real numbers to watch when it comes to the business of Hollywood.

Consider "Shrek," which grossed $475 million at theaters worldwide. When it hit the home video market, the animated comedy generated $460 million in sales in the United States alone -- selling 24 million videocassettes and DVDs domestically and 11 million more overseas.

It's expected that "Harry Potter" will outsell previous DVD, since the format is still experience an explosive period of growth. In the first quarter of 2002, distributors shipped 120 million DVD units to stores.

That's almost twice as many as they shipped during the same quarter last year, the biggest year yet for DVD sales, with an estimated 364 million DVDs sold -- twice as many as in 2000.

AMERICAN TALIBAN STORY HEADED FOR TV DRAMA

FX and Artisan Television are developing a two-hour TV movie dramatizing the story of American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh.

Writer-producer John Romano ("Third Watch," "Party of Five") has been signed to write the script, which is being developed at FX under the working title "American Taliban." He told Daily Variety that the storyline hasn't been worked out yet, since Lindh's case is still pending in the courts -- but he said the project would try to explain what motivated Lindh to fight for an enemy of the United States.

"I was compelled by the profound psychological and political mystery of this kid," said Romano. "How does someone grow up in Marin County with all the benefits that America has to offer, and then end up in Afghanistan with an AK-47?"

DIRECTORS HONOR CONGRESSMAN

The Directors Guild of America has announced that it will present a special award to Rep. Charles Rangel, D.N.Y., at its third annual DGA Honors gala June 9.

Rangel is being honored for his work on Capitol Hill to fight runaway production -- the name given to the practice in which producers take movie and TV projects to other countries to keep down the cost of production. Rangel introduced the Independent Film and Television Production Incentive Act of 2001, calling for a 25 percent tax credit, based on wages, for film projects with budgets under $10 million.

The June 9 awards will also honor "60 Minutes" producer Don Hewitt, filmmaker Spike Lee and former National Endowment for the Arts chairwoman Jane Alexander.

LOOSE ENDS

Halle Berry, Michael Douglas, Jodie Foster and Mike Myers will be joined by dozens of other celebrities at a gala on July 14 to celebrate Paramount Pictures' 90th anniversary.

Celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz will shoot a group photo in front of the world-famous Paramount studio gates for the October issue of Vanity Fair.

Harrison Ford -- due on U.S. theater screens this summer as a the commander of a the former Soviet Union's first nuclear ballistic submarine in "K-19: The Widowmaker" -- has reportedly agreed to a deal to star in a movie version of Lawrence Block's crime novel "A Walk Among the Tombstones."

CBS is developing a TV movie based on the life and work of Mary Kay Ash -- the cosmetics queen who died last November at 86. Shirley MacLaine reportedly will star in "The Battle of Mary Kay."

ALREADY?

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has mailed applications for the 2002 Scientific and Technical Awards, kicking off the public portion of the 75th Academy Awards season.

Entry forms were sent to more than 850 companies and individuals within the sci-tech film community both in the United States and abroad. The academy will consider achievements that "show exceptional merit and evidence of having provided significant advances in the production of motion pictures."

Hopefuls have until Aug. 1 to return their applications to the Academy.