The news millions of children (and socially awkward adults who enjoy playing wizarding make-believe in their leisure time) have been waiting for has finally come: Plans for a Harry Potter theme park have been announced, in which the series's enchanted cobblestone walkways and ivy-covered walls will be painstainkingly recreated on the grounds of the equally magical Universal's Islands of Adventure. Reports the AP:

The Times continues to speculate about what on earth the poor sad book publishing industry will do once series-closer Harry Potter and The Deathly Hollows kills off Ron Weasley this summer. (What? Come on, you know it's gonna happen.) The article, co-penned by Motoko Rich and Julie Bosman, hits the usual alarmist notes: what will Scholastic do now?? (A: continue to sell lots of other books, just like they've always done), how will this affect stockholders (who cares), and will children stop reading books and start just start staring raptly into their video iPods all the time (well, yes). One question remains, though: what will be Rich's and Bosman's new beats once Pottermania dies down? Seriously, the ladies are obsessed. Watch your back, Ginny Weasley!

You'd think that in a town where a significant percentage of the population spends the other 364 days of the year slicing, injecting, and restuffing themselves beyond recognition, by the time All Hallow's Eve rolls around, they'd have no energy left for yet further modifications—but you'd be wrong. Something about L.A.'s highly plasticized nature, paired with the bloodcurdling showbiz tales of terror we all know so well, make Hollywood and Halloween a nearly perfect complimentary pairing, resulting in a holiday of heightened horror: Hollyween. In honor of your pre-Hollyween weekend festivites, a round-up:
· The LAT details how the studios have been cashing in on a healthy chunk of what has become a $5 billion-per-year industry, through the licensing of their characters to costume manufacturers. Long ago having outgrown the Disney character kiddie-sector, you can now buy fully authorized costumes of all your grown-up screen favorites, including a Nacho Libre Spandex get-up sure to give everyone at your office party love-handle-related nightmares for weeks. [LAT]

• Katie Couric's first week is accompanied by her first blog, a rambling, 10000-word treatment on the importance of being perky, complete with Karen Carpenter lyrics. Congrats, Katie. You're really done something. [Couric & Co.]
• Kazakhastan is now denying that Borat will be a topic during meetings with the U.S. This is just fantastic, isn't it? An international debate on whether or not a fictional character will be discussed at a diplomatic summit. No wonder the terrorists hate us. [The Blotter]
• If JK Rowling has to give up the manuscript for the final Harry Potter book, then the terrorists really have won. [BBC]
• Fashion Week is all about luxurious balls. [Coutorture]
• Lydia Hearst fashion porn: scary, and yet we can't look away. [Bastardly]
• Path to 9/11 producers depict American Airways personnel cheerfully letting Mohammad Atta on the plane; it was actually cheerful US Airways personnel who did so, and it's going to cost ABC some advertising dollars. [Consumerist]
• Jay McInerney has yet to master the art of walking while tipsy. You'd think, but you'd be wrong. [Belle in the Big Apple]
• Sure is hard to make friends in this town. [NYP]
• Watching a blogger get his first death threat is like watching your child take his first steps. He's not our baby, but we're still proud of him. [Goldenfiddle]
• Read the New Yorker and live to be 102. Yay, ancient people! Yay, Conde Nast! [EmDashes]
• Critics still really, RILLY love The Wire. [Test Pattern]
• Drinking = money. No, really. Rejoice! [AP]

I don't want him to go over the Reichenbach Falls.

There are just so many times an actor can be directed to "pretend the dangling, green tennis ball is a fearsome Dragonunicorncyclops lunging at you!" before he starts to feel a little underchallenged in his craft. It should come as no surprise, then, that Daniel Radcliffe, the 17-year-old who plays Harry Potter, has decided to take on the lead role in Equus, a "serious" play on London's West End, which, from the sounds of it, will offer plenty of opportunities to stretch his instrument:

We have absolutely no context* for the above photograph of the 15-year-old Emma Watson, better known to the world as overachieving Harry Potter sidekick Hermione Granger, gulping a Corona in a jarringly innocent-looking Snoopy shirt. For all we know, this could be a studio still from the set of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which features a scene dealing with the unpleasant—but all too common—realities of underage drinking, in which the young wizards get shitfaced on butterbeer and draw genitals on Ron Weasley's face with their wands after he passes out. The Hermione experience won't be complete without visiting the site where the pictures live, which fittingly enhances their presentation with a soundtrack by Jimmy Buffet.

Apropos nothing, a reader sends us a moving image of young Emma Watson (age 15), co-star of the Harry Potter movies, enjoying an icy cold Corona. While this can only mean shame, rehab, and a True Hollywood Story for Watson, this is the best thing to happen to the publishing industry in years: Instead of JK Rowling finishing Harry Potter with her next book, the seventh and final in the series, she can continue to rake in millions with a young adult drug and alcohol spin-off series. What parent wouldn't want their child to own The Muggle's Guide to Peer Pressure?

· Selected cosmopolitan audiences love Fat Clooney! Syriana pulls down over half a million bucks on only five screens spread across LA, NY, and Toronto. Personal anecdote loosely illustrating Syriana's big city popularity: We were among those lining up for a sold-out showing at the Grove (do we live there now?), and enjoyed a satisfied laugh when the theater's crack crowd-control personnel punished evil line-jumpers by loudly yanking them aside and making them wait to enter the lobby. [Variety]
· "There was a time when Howard Stern fans could hear — but not see — a naked porn star giving a hot-oil massage on TV uncensored." God bless the brave new world of VOD. [THR]
· CBS seems likely to repeat as November sweeps champs in the coveted 18-49 demographic, as well as in the merely AARP-lusted-after 25-54 demo. NBC, it seems, is still valiantly refusing to cease its primetime broadcast operations, even in the face of unspeakable Nielsen horror. [Variety]
· Harry Potter dominates the foreign box office, bringing its international treasure chest up to $207 million, an amount that will almost certainly be written off as "offshore piracy" when figuring out profit participation. [Variety]
· Mad About You writer Danny Jacobson will pen the suddenly, officially single Nick Lachey's comedy pilot for The WB. Lachey will play a baseball player trying to navigate a new marriage, but who quickly fades into obscurity once the wife discovers how many movie stars are willing to sleep with her. [THR]

Just because this is only a three-day week doesn't mean you only get sixty percent of your usual joy in the box office results. In the spirit of the coming holiday, take your full bliss from the numbers:

· If just about everything in Hollywood devolves into a dick-measuring contest, why should art collecting be any different? The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke looks at erstwhile superagent Mike Ovitz's attempts to have the biggest dick in town.
· There may be no better way to welcome the opening of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire than to watch video in which one of its (legal!) stars is topless.
· It would be horribly rude if we didn't wish a happy 37th birthday to Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson. To celebrate the occasion, please enjoy this picture of Hollywood's Official Playmate Inspector plying his trade.
· As it turns out, the Lindsay Lohan-Jason Lewis story is true.
· LA.comfidential catches FPJ having dinner with a non-SMG female, suspects foul play.
· Have you heard? The critics are raving about Rent! All two of them.

Today's NY Times presents Encyclopedia Brown and the Case Of The Guy Who Wrote the Books and the Producers Looking to Get Filthy Rich from the Somewhat Disputed Movie Rights; if our obvious riff on the titles of the storied children's detective series hasn't given you enough of a summary of the fight to bring the books to the big screen, give the article a read. But what's all the fuss about? Producers Howard Deutsch and Ridley Scott realize that with just a few minor tweaks, they can smell the sweet stink of Harry Potter money all over the franchise:

And apparently it's quite popular.