RUSH TO JUDGMENT

Just when you were getting worried that there weren’t enough screenwriters to handle polishes on “Police Academy” sequels . . .

Daily News film critic Kirk Honeycutt has left the paper--to write scripts.

And after sorting out a flood of applicants for the vacancy, the Daily News has hired Michael Healy of the Denver Post (he begins in late July), who’s also ... a screenwriter.

Healy, 38, who has a master’s in English from Harvard, told us from Denver that he’s written several scripts. One has been produced--”Vamping,” a CBS/Fox Video feature starring Patrick Duffy that came out in 1984 (to less than wonderful reviews).

Healy added: “I’m very aware of the conflict-of-interest situation,” and said he will put his scripting on hold at the Daily News, as he has for four years at the Post.

Honeycutt is writing a comedy-drama set in the newspaper world with British free-lance journalist Ian Harmer. No deal yet.

Honeycutt left the Daily News amicably, he said, because of its recent move to distant Woodland Hills and because of burnout from “the daily grind of reviewing”: “There are not enough films per year to get excited writing about, so you end up ragging on people most of the time.”

He never got so wrung out that he walked out on a picture, he added--”although ‘Spaceballs’ was certainly a candidate.”