FIRST OFF . . .

Book acquisition fever struck hard Thursday. Television stylemeister Michael Mann announced that he had acquired small-screen rights to Elaine Shannon’s “Desperadoes,” a hard-hitting account of Latin American drug enforcement geopolitics and the murder of Drug Enforcement Agency operative Jorge Camarena. And former Lorimar Film Entertainment chairman Bernie Brillstein snapped up feature-film rights to “The Predator’s Ball” by Connie Bruck, a tome chronicling the life and times of “junk bond” czar Michael Milken. Interestingly, the central figures of both books are also central figures in ongoing federal court proceedings. Mann said Thursday he’s targeting May, 1989, as an air date for the 6-hour miniseries, for which Mann says he has the full cooperation of the DEA. Brillstein has no timetable just yet.