In a strange twist straight out of a Hollywood thriller, on Tuesday night Universal Studios in Hollywood experienced a major fire exactly 13 years after a previous three-alarm inferno ravaged a three-acre section of the Universal backlot.
The fire began shortly before midnight at Universal Studios theme park’s under construction “Despicable Me” attraction, reported the New York Post.
“Oh my God — the minion!” a woman’s voice can be heard saying in footage of the fire as huge clouds of smoke envelope the attraction and its “minions,” the main characters from the Despicable Me movies.
A male voice can be heard joking, “I don’t even like minions. Burn!”
The video was filmed by an RMG News camera crew. They spoke to an onlooker named “Toni” who said that she heard “a couple of explosions” and that she initially mistook the rising smoke for rain clouds.
RMG stated that the fire was visible for miles. It was eventually subdued by crews from several fire departments.
The fire took place on the exact same day as a 2008 fire that did massive damage to Universal Studios.
That fire destroyed 40,000 to 50,000 archived digital videos and films along with a huge archive of analogue audio master tapes from multiple longtime and classic music labels.
The music vault contained released and unreleased master tapes from celebrated musicians and bands dating back to the 1950s, including outtakes, alternate versions of released material and instrumental tracks created for dubbing and mix downs. The masters of as many as 500,000 individual tracks were destroyed.