What was claimed
A video shows fire surrounding the Hollywood sign.
Our verdict
The video isn’t real. At the time of writing, the Hollywood sign is not on fire, and there were no fires in its immediate vicinity.
Video of fire surrounding the Hollywood sign isn’t real
A video has been shared on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) with claims it shows fire surrounding the famous Hollywood sign in Los Angeles—but this didn’t happen, and the footage isn’t real.
There have been several wildfires in Los Angeles in recent days, including in Hollywood Hills, near the Hollywood sign, but at the time of writing, the fire that was nearest the sign itself has been contained, and there have been no credible reports of the sign or its immediate vicinity catching fire. The Hollywood Sign Trust said on Instagram in a 9 January post: “The Hollywood Sign continues to stand tall! Please keep the rest of Los Angeles County in your thoughts, and stay alert if you have to travel around.”
Using the TikTok handle in the video’s watermark, Full Fact traced the footage back to a now-deleted post from 9 January. The video was posted by a YouTube channel with a similar username on the same day, with the title “New fire ignites in Hollywood Hills”.
The caption on this YouTube video, which has 240,000 views, suggested the footage was from 8 January 2025. The Sunset Fire, which was nearest to the Hollywood sign, started on Wednesday 8 January, but was confirmed to have been 100% contained the next day.
The YouTube channel and TikTok page both include a link to a PayPal account that says “we create original music, graphics, and video scenes”.
This video is set at night—and as we’ve explained before, tell-tale signs of a video being fake are harder to spot in dark or nighttime footage. Most of the other videos posted on the TikTok account and YouTube channel are more obviously computer or AI-generated, with a tell-tale gloss or sheen. For this reason, we suspect this video was also created by CGI or AI.
We have contacted the TikTok account to ask how it created this particular video and will update this article if we receive a response.
News stories receiving international attention such as the Los Angeles fires can quickly become the subject of misinformation online, with false claims being difficult to correct after they have been shared widely.
This pattern is extremely common online. We regularly see likely-AI generated and miscaptioned videos shared when environmental events such as hurricanes, wildfires or earthquakes occur.
For further advice on how to verify videos before you share them, read our guide.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because the video isn’t real, and has likely been created using CGI or AI.