King Kong may have met his match (no pun intended) when a massive fire tore through his popular exhibit this morning destroying three quarters of it.
According to news reports, right now damage to Universal Studios Hollywood is still being assessed but firefighters say a sizeable portion of the place where movie magic happens has either been destroyed or damaged.
Fire officials confirm that at least one building has burned and as many as three blocks of movie facades are now ash. Fire investigators have not determined what caused the blaze but say it broke out just before dawn on a sound stage on Universal’s back lot.
According to Universal execs, the fire completely destroyed the New York set (which appeared in films and TV shows from Spiderman 2 and The Transformers to Ghost Whisperer and Crossing Jordan) and a set from Back to the Future, which included the movie’s iconic courthouse square. Fire crews say they were able to salvage the famous clock tower that enabled star Michael J. Fox’s character to travel through time, though they said it did suffer some damage. Fire officials also said that the house featured in Psycho was heavily damaged.
In addition, a video vault containing more than 40,000 videos and reels (which included every film that Universal has produced and footage from television series’ like Miami Vice and I Love Lucy) was also damaged. But according to Universal execs, the movie studio has duplicates stored in a different location.
Despite the fire Universal City Walk and Universal Studios theme park opened to the public as scheduled this morning. However, studio execs say the King Kong exhibit, which is a stop on the studio’s tram tour, will no longer part of the tour at least for the time being. Tonight’s MTV Movie Awards, which is being held at Universal Studios, is also scheduled to go on as planned.