`PRIMETIME' UNCERTAINTY DOESN'T SLOW SAWYER DOWN.

Byline: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

While ABC News continues to ponder folding ``PrimeTime Live'' into ``20/20'' - a decision is expected to be announced within the next two weeks, Diane Sawyer is plowing forward on other fronts. She has an in-depth discussion airing May 6 with Ellen DeGeneres about the ending of ``Ellen.'' And she's deciding among several prospects for her next hourlong special report.

Last October, the esteemed news veteran agreed to extend her ABC contract until 1999. ``I sort of declared my determination to do some more comprehensive pieces,'' notes Sawyer, who skirts the issue of what will happen if ``20/20'' and ``PrimeTime Live'' are combined. (``It's not my decision.'')

Sawyer has already logged one such in-depth report, on chemical weapons, this year. With her added mission to do such shows, life ``has been anything but less frenetic,'' she says, ``but the pacing can come later.''

Meanwhile, Sawyer has been approached about writing her memoirs. It's not going to happen any time soon. She says she has neither the time nor the inclination to share some parts of her life.

Certainly, her journey from beauty queen (she was a national Junior Miss) to Nixon White House press aide to top-flight ABC newswoman would guarantee interest. So would her on-the-job drama - plus her personal life as the wife of director Mike Nichols. And then there was the time Baruch Korff, the prominent rabbi who stood by Richard Nixon throughout the Watergate scandal, announced that he believed Diane was the famous ``Deep Throat'' who anonymously helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein break the Watergate story.

``It was a level of absurdity I couldn't have imagined. ... Me, dressed up in a trench coat as a man - Deep Throat was identified as a man - meeting someone in a garage? You've got the wrong girl! Later, Bob Woodward came out and said it wasn't me.''

Men among men

You can expect some of the lesser-knowns in Steven Spielberg's forthcoming ``Saving Private Ryan'' to get showcased right along with Tom Hanks, Matt Damon and Edward Burns when promotion for the much-anticipated July DreamWorks release goes into full swing. We get word that Spielberg wants his World War II soldiers shown as an ensemble, all troops being equal, which has to come as great news for the likes of Giovanni Ribisi and Jeremy Davies. The super-hot Damon, by the way, plays the title character and doesn't show up until late in the movie.

The industry eye

Barbara Kopple's ``Wild Man Blues'' documentary - about Woody Allen, his clarinet, his band and his wife Soon-Yi - could provide needed momentum for a feature-length documentary she's had long in the works. The latter, which has undergone a title switch from ``Woodstock '94'' to ``Generations,'' represents a total of 250 hours of lensing by the prize-winning filmmaker - who spent three years assembling it.

But, alas, it's still in need of a studio to finance its completion and handle its distribution. Meanwhile, Kopple will be making her first fiction film, an adaptation of David Rabe's classic hit play ``In the Boom Boom Room.'' Producer Geisler Roberdeau has set Patricia Arquette to play go-go dancer Chrissy, with production to roll soon in Philadelphia.

Mummy fearest

It'll be a new and improved mummy in Universal's new redux of the classic horror hit, ``The Mummy,'' reports John Hannah, who co-stars in the film with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz.

``Everybody thinks it's going to be some tired, dodgy old geezer in a bunch of bandages,'' says the Scottish actor. ``But it's not like some old mummy that creeps around at half a mile an hour. In the old movie, the mummy could come in the room, and you could make your dinner, pack your case and leave by a side door, and he still wouldn't have gotten to the table. The new script is a real romp. It's a bit like `Indiana Jones' and pretty high tech. We have the terminator mummy - so quick, so bad, so evil ...''

The ``Four Weddings and a Funeral'' actor, who opens Friday opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in Miramax's romantic dramedy ``Sliding Doors,'' leaves for Marrakesh this week to begin filming ``The Mummy.'' ``I play this British archeologist who discovers the artifact that leads us to the pyramid. I'm kind of mummy food, really, but I sort of avoid him for as long as possible.''

With reports by Stephanie DuBois.

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Photo: (1) Diane Sawyer

No memoirs yet

(2) Barbara Kopple

``Wild Man'' boost