Not strictly movie news, but there has been a large fire on a Universal Studios backlot in Los Angeles. It broke out before dawn on a sound stage there and has spread since then.

Universal Studios has been used to film scenes for films such as King Kong and The War of the Worlds.

Over 100 firefighters were tackling the blaze, including dropping water from helicopters. Amoung the sets believed to have been affected are the New York street sets and New England street sets. The New York sets have been used on hundreds of films, and will be a big loss to Universal, if they are badly damaged.

The BBC says that no one has been injured, and the park will be open as usual. The MTV Movie awards are due to go ahead as planned. No word yet on any filming that may be disrupted.

Update [Richard]: You can see a video of the fire over on the BBC.

Update [Louise]:

Apparently the King Kong exhibit has been destroyed, as well as the courthouse square from Back to the Future. With the infamous clocktower also damaged. The video vault has also been set alight, with some 40,000 to 50,000 videos being damaged. However they keep duplicates of all material elsewhere. The latest is over on Yahoo!.