2008 Universal Studios fire

On June 1, 2008, a fire broke out on the backlot of Universal Studios Hollywood, an American film studio and theme park in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles County, California. The fire began when a worker used a blowtorch to warm asphalt shingles that were being applied to a facade. The worker left before checking that all spots had cooled, and as a result, a three-alarm fire broke out. Nine firefighters and a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy sustained minor injuries. The fire was extinguished after 24 hours.

Universal Pictures said the fire destroyed a three-acre (1.2 ha) portion of the Universal backlot, including the attraction King Kong Encounter and 40,000 to 50,000 archived digital video and film copies. A 2019 exposé from The New York Times Magazine asserted that the fire also destroyed 118,000 to 175,000 audio master tapes belonging to Universal Music Group (UMG), Universal's former division and NBCUniversal's then-sister company through Vivendi, a shareholder with General Electric until 2009. This included original recordings belonging to some of the best-selling artists worldwide. UMG disputed the report, though the CEO, Lucian Grainge, acknowledged that "the loss of even a single piece of archived material is heartbreaking".

On June 1, 2008, a three-alarm fire broke out on the Universal Studios Lot, the backlot of Universal Studios. The fire started when a worker was using a blowtorch to warm asphalt shingles being applied to a facade. Among the structures damaged by the fire were mock New York and New England streets, the King Kong Encounter attraction, the Courthouse Square featured in Back to the Future and the Universal video vault.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) sent 516 firefighters, as well as two helicopters dropping water. Nine firefighters and a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy sustained minor injuries. The fire took at least 12 hours to extinguish, in part because of the low water pressure due to the low capacity of Universal's pipes; firefighters had to tap streams and lakes. The fire was extinguished after 24 hours.

Universal executives initially said the fire destroyed 40,000 to 50,000 archived digital video and film copies of Universal movies and television shows, some almost a century old, and including the films Knocked Up and Atonement, the NBC series Law & Order, The Office, and Miami Vice, and the CBS series I Love Lucy. Universal president Ron Meyer told the media that "nothing irreplaceable was lost" and that the company had duplicates of everything destroyed. Universal replaced the King Kong attraction with King Kong: 360 3-D, based on the 2005 King Kong film.

In June 2019, The New York Times Magazine published an investigative article by freelance journalist Jody Rosen that alleged that the damage was far more serious than Universal had said.

The fire destroyed Building 6197, a warehouse adjoining the King Kong attraction. In addition to more videos, it housed a huge archive containing multiple copies of audio and video recordings, documents ranging from legal papers to liner notes, and packaging materials and artwork belonging to Universal Music Group (UMG). The collection included the catalogues of UMG's West Coast labels including Chess, Decca, MCA, Geffen, Interscope, A&M, Impulse!, and their subsidiary labels.

Rosen estimated the individual items lost range from 118,000 to 175,000 album and 45-rpm single master tapes, phonograph master discs, lacquers (also known as acetates), and all the documentation contained in the tape boxes. The article alleged some tapes contained unreleased recordings such as outtakes, alternative versions of released material, and instrumental "submaster" multitracks created for dubbing and mixdown. However, UMG found only one unreleased album potentially affected in the fire, and they located multiple copies of that recording and could still release that album in the future if the artist wishes to. Randy Aronson, manager of the vault at the time, estimates that the masters of as many as 500,000 individual tracks were lost.