Archives Safe Despite Universal's Unplanned Disaster Movie

It has emerged this morning that film archives destroyed in the massive weekend blaze that has raised a whole acre of the world-famous Universal Studios in Los Angeles to the ground have been 'backed-up' elsewhere and the originals safe.
Also, last night's MTV film awards, at the nearby Gibson Amphitheatre, also owned by Universal, went ahead as planned.
The good news came amid scenes straight from one of Tinseltown's own disaster movies yesterday, after a massive fire broke out at Los Angeles' biggest film studio, destroying several historic film sets and damaging one of the industry's most valuable video archives.
However, Universal reported this morning that while the warehouse holding video vaults containing 40,000 original and master versions of old Universal films which was also burned to the ground was "compromised" nothing was irreplaceable so no unique - previously un-copied footage - had been lost.
Yesterday, a total of 300 firefighters were called to Universal Studios after a blaze broke out in a back-lot area containing New York and New England street scenes, which had been used in such well-known productions as Seinfeld and War of the Worlds.
The famous 'courthouse' square where the final scenes of Back to the Future were filmed went up in smoke, while the artificial clock-tower that allowed Michael J Fox to travel back in time during the film was reported to have been damaged.
Television footage showed dramatic images of helicopters dropping water on several structures within the 230-acre site, while water cannons struggled to prevent 100-foot flames spreading to adjacent buildings.
A thick black smoke poured more than half a mile into the air, causing a haze that blanketed the western side of the city at daybreak.
It was not immediately clear how the fire had started, although a soundstage on the lot where it broke out was used for filming over the weekend, meaning that the finger of suspicion initially pointed towards a fault with one of its electrical appliances.
The nearby Universal Studios theme park, a well-known tourist attraction on the site, had also lost its King Kong exhibit, in which a giant ape bellows at tram passengers while simultaneously releasing banana scent.
However, despite the incident, the management of the theme park were behaving with admirable stoicism yesterday.
Although opening was delayed from 9am until noon, they said it would be "business as usual", with the exception of the King Kong exhibit.
Universal, which is owned by General Electric, has seen production of hundreds of Hollywood's most iconic films during its long history, including When Harry met Sally, ET, and Jaws. The director Steven Spielberg houses his production company Amblin Entertainment on the site.
(BMcC)