2008 Universal Studios fire

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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".