Going the way of the black rhinoceros and Deadline.com as we know it, Blockbuster is joining the list of things that will be all-but extinct by the end of the year. The Wall Street Journal reports that just in time for the holidays, Blockbuster will be closing its remaining 300 brick and mortar rental outlets, as well as ending its DVD-by-mail program.

After finally recovering from the onslaught of complaints they received after Destiny Hope Cyrus smeared her burgeoning latex-clad sexuality all over Jason Seaver's son, the FCC is back in action. Unfortunately, the Super Bowl is still three months away and winter is upon us, so most middle fingers have stayed firmly gloved and nipples have been tucked back into their brassieres. Fear not, the censorship giants have decided to go after America's favorite ginger: Conan O'Brien.

Ron Burgundy may have lost his job to Veronica Corningstone in the upcoming Anchorman 2, but hot damn if he can't sell some crappy cars.

A kiss from Melissa Joan Hart could really ruin your career; Rachel gets The Rachel, even though she really used to hate The Rachel; Harvey Weinstein is already scheming for 2016 to back the president with the most pull at the Mars Chocolate Company; and CBS is still so mad at Dan Rather.

The ongoing battle between PMC's Jay Penske and Deadline's Nikki Finke started with a bang and is now ending with a whimper, as Finke is finally out of the motor oil heir's slippery clutches. Finke shared with me that while she's happy to be free from Deadline, she is sad over the way the separation played out, and offered parting thoughts on Penske, Deadline film editor Mike Fleming Jr., and the fact that at one point, she offered to quit online blogging entirely.

Jon Favreau is circling a directing gig on Disney's live action version of The Jungle Book. If it's not just George of the Jungle digitally remastered, I'm not going to see it.

Looks like Oliva Pope is the new zombies, because CBS is developing a new drama from CSI showrunner Carol Mendelsohn, and crisis manager Judy Smith, who served as the basis for Scandal's baddest bitch in charge.

Not sure how to fill the Bryan-Cranston-bald-pate shaped hole in your heart now that Breaking Bad is no more? A source close to the situation just tipped me off that AMC is right on the brink of picking up two new dramas: Knifeman and Galyntine. This story is still breaking, and updates will continue to come as pickups are officially announced.

Two of this fall's most interesting new comedies are going to fail, and its all Amazon's fault.

Marvel's newest Ms. Marvel is going to be a Muslim teenage girl, Kamala Khan. The fictional New Jersey resident will appear in a special edition in January, and her series will debut the following month. While the new resident badass' religion is sure to ruffle some feathers, this is Marvel's second Muslim character—the first was Sooraya Qadir, aka Dust, in The New X-Men.

Obvious statement of the day: screenwriting is not an easy profession to break into. Because of this truism, a cottage industry of screenplay services has popped up to help Hollywood hopefuls get notes, learn how to market themselves, and—most lucrative of all—have their material exposed to someone who might actually get their passion project made. But while much has been said (even on this site) about how worthless most of these services are—an inefficacy often inversely correlated to price tag, mind you—there might be room for a company to actually do it right. The Black List, a script reading service started by former development executive Franklin Leonard, is hoping to bridge the gap between screenplay services and producers.

In a tale sure to be seen in theaters near you just in time for the 2015 Oscar race, the insurance agent who scammed America's hero Tom Hanks out of $840,000 that could have gone to Chet Haze's budding rap career, has been sentenced to two years in prison.

Idiomatic linguists may soon have to come up with a new meaning for "watching paint dry," if Hollywood has anything to say about it—because literally watching paint dry is on the fast-track to becoming must-see TV.

Amidst a stumbling start for the Affordable Health Care Act, The California Endowment, a private health foundation that is currently touting Obamacare, is providing a $500,000 grant to help educate the public on the merits of Obamacare—via their favorite television shows.

How I Met Your Mother will be doing something extremely annoying, because hey, last season; Berlin instead of Hungary is the new home of The Grand Budapest Hotel; monthly DirecTV payments are equal to the monthly lease on a mid-size sedan; and you just might be getting the Ramones movie you didn't know you wanted.

It took no less than two weeks after underground drug site Silk Road was shut down for it to get turned into a movie, and now just a month after its close, Silk Road and Bitcoin are also getting the documentary treatment.

In an article in The Wall Street Journal, media and marketing editor Martin Peers lays out the complicated manner in which he was able to get HBO without being beholden to a bundle of other cable channels—but before you start showering your roommates in bits of electrical wire in a cord-cutting celebration dance, it's important to note that Peers didn't really get rid of all his channels, and he didn't save much money either.

NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke has been waging a bloody internal battle to to save NBCU's properties. Its latest casualty? Mark Stern, head of SyFy's original programming.