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President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were rushed off stage and evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner after shots were reportedly fired at the Washington Hilton ballroom on Saturday night.

Trump announced on Truth Social after the evacuation that he and Melania were safe, and that the event will be rescheduled within the next 30 days after law enforcement requested that attendees exit the premises.

“Law Enforcement has requested that we leave the premises, consistent with protocol, which we will do, immediately. I will be giving a press conference in 30 minutes from the White House Press Briefing Room,” he wrote. “The First Lady, plus the Vice President, and all Cabinet members, are in perfect condition. We will be speaking to you in a half an hour. I have spoken with all the representatives in charge of the event, and we will be rescheduling within 30 days. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

President Trump and the First Lady were seated on the stage with the head of the White House Correspondents Association when the loud sounds were heard inside the ballroom. It was not immediately clear what the loud sounds that led to the evacuation were attributed to, but the president was removed from the dinner.

Trump took to Truth Social after he was evacuated, writing, “Quite an evening in D.C. Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job. They acted quickly and bravely. The shooter has been apprehended, and I have recommended that we ‘LET THE SHOW GO ON’ but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement. They will make a decision shortly. Regardless of that decision, the evening will be much different than planned, and we’ll just, plain, have to do it again. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

A source told CNN that Trump is safe, and that a shooter is in custody; the condition of the suspect is unknown. A White House official reiterated Trump’s sentiments to MS Now that the he is still planning to deliver his speech, though it’s unclear when he will deliver remarks.

The program will reportedly resume, MS Now and C-SPAN both detailed on their broadcasts. Trump was attending the event for the first time since 2011.

The room, which was filled with journalists, politicians, and celebrities, was not evacuated following the incident. Initial concern at the gala seemed to fade as security swept the ballroom and guests began to converse as they waited for any instructions.

A news executive on the scene shared details from inside the venue with The Hollywood Reporter, noting, “We heard shots and people were huddled under the tables and threw themselves on the ground as soon as the shots rang out. But the band kept playing. There was a lot of panic in one corner of the room, and it seemed like in other corners no one could hear what was going on. Some people here really want to get the hell out, but at the moment they are blocking everyone from leaving.”

The exec continued, “Everyone is in the phone right now but reception here is very spotty. There’s a pack of CNN reporters Huddled around [CNN chief] Mark Thompson, all of them on their phones. It’s like controlled pandemonium.”

The Secret Service issued a statement confirming they are investigated the incident: “The U.S. Secret Service, in coordination with the Metropolitan Police Department, is investigating a shooting incident near the main magnetometer screening area at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The president and the first lady are safe along all protectees. One individual is in custody. The condition of those involved is not yet known, and law enforcement is actively assessing the situation.”

On March 2, the president posted to his Truth Social account that this would be the year he would head to the Washington Hilton and step onto the stage in front of the people he has long referred to as the “enemy of the people.”

“In honor of our Nation’s 250th Birthday,” he wrote, “And the fact that these ‘Correspondents’ now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country — the G.O.A.T., according to many — it will be my honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER OF ANY KIND, EVER!”

Trump’s attendance at the event came with controversy as Dan Rather, the Society of Professional Journalists, and 350-plus other journalists and organizations signed a letter calling on the body to “forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press.”

More to come.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were rushed off stage and evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner after shots were reportedly fired at the Washington Hilton ballroom on Saturday night.

President Trump and the First Lady were seated on the stage with the head of the White House Correspondents Association when the loud sounds were heard inside the ballroom. It was not immediately clear what the loud sounds that led to the evacuation were attributed to, but the president was removed from the dinner.

Trump took to Truth Social after he was evacuated, writing, “Quite an evening in D.C. Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job. They acted quickly and bravely. The shooter has been apprehended, and I have recommended that we ‘LET THE SHOW GO ON’ but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement. They will make a decision shortly. Regardless of that decision, the evening will be much different than planned, and we’ll just, plain, have to do it again. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

The room, which was filled with journalists, politicians, and celebrities, was not evacuated following the incident. Initial concern at the gala seemed to fade as security swept the ballroom and guests began to converse as they wait for any instructions.

The program will reportedly resume, MS Now and C-SPAN both detailed on their broadcasts. Trump was attending the event for the first time since 2011.

A source told CNN that Trump is safe, and that a shooter is in custody. A White House official reiterated Trump’s sentiments to MS Now that the he is still planning to deliver his speech, though it’s unclear when he will deliver remarks.

On March 2, the president posted to his Truth Social account that this would be the year he would head to the Washington Hilton and step onto the stage in front of the people he has long referred to as the “enemy of the people.”

“In honor of our Nation’s 250th Birthday,” he wrote, “and the fact that these ‘Correspondents’ now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country — the G.O.A.T., according to many — it will be my honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER OF ANY KIND, EVER!”

Trump’s attendance at the event came with controversy as Dan Rather, the Society of Professional Journalists, and 350-plus other journalists and organizations signed a letter calling on the body to “forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press.”

More to come.

Filmmaker Kane Parsons is ready to take Backrooms from YouTube to the big screen.

The 20-year-old Parsons, who will become A24‘s youngest feature director when the studio releases his horror movie in theaters on May 29, took the stage at CCXP Mexico on Saturday to share insight into his process. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell star in the film that counts James Wan, Shawn Levy and Osgood Perkins as producers and has a script from Will Soodik.

Backrooms adapts the YouTube series that Parsons began uploading to YouTube as a teen in early 2022. Taking its origins from urban legend and various web posts, the videos centered on an infinite maze of rooms with humming fluorescent lights and yellow wallpaper. In the A24 film, Reinsve plays a therapist who must track down a missing patient in a bizarre dimension.

Parsons explained that the movie uses the existing series and lore as a jumping-off point to examine its characters. “It does take more of a specific approach, where you’re seeing it through the lens of these specific characters — these individuals living these atomized, lonely lives,” he said. “In the film, there is rarely a moment where there’s more than one or two characters on screen at a given time. It’s a pretty lonely film.”

The filmmaker recounted teaching himself to use the free, open-source 3D graphics software Blender to create the world of his YouTube videos, which he continued to utilize for the feature. He and the team, including cinematographer Jeremy Cox, were careful to maintain continuity with the web series.

“I was working in Blender, modeling the sets, and then we would literally go and build them in real time,” Parsons said of making the movie. “We did a lot of tests there to make sure we were getting the general tone that people expected [from] Backrooms. We did 50 wallpaper tests to get the right shape of yellow.”

Parsons shared behind-the-scenes footage of the massive set getting built and recalled that he eventually had to step away from guiding the set construction to start filming exterior scenes. When he came back two weeks later to see the finished set, it was “the strangest, coolest moment on this project for me.”

He added, “The set was huge. We built 30,000 square feet of actual backrooms that we could walk around in. Actually, some people were getting lost. It felt like being there, which was really weird.”

Throughout the making of the film, Parsons was careful to maintain his initial logic for this world: “I always try to stay away from the idea that the backrooms is somehow a dreamy headspace thing where, if you turn around, the room could have changed. It preys on the human brain’s ability to map spaces and understand them. The hard part for that is, if you go back the way you came, you will go back the way you came, but it just keeps going and going and going. That’s where the confusion and the convolution goes. So eventually, you just have to give up trying to map it, whereas if it were constantly changing, you would be giving up a lot faster.”

For Parsons, who described first posting videos to YouTube at age 9 or 10, the Backrooms series struck a chord with audiences because of a “collective anxiety around the system — economic, industrial or otherwise — that has been building for the past few centuries.”

After praising his film’s cast, the director went on to explain, “The backrooms, to me, has felt aligned with what happens when someone goes through sensory deprivation on the individual level — and you go out in an empty room — and the body, the nervous system needs stimulation so badly [when] it’s deprived of it. It starts to find noise and information in the pattern of the walls and starts to take that noise more seriously than it normally would. It opens its threshold of what it’s willing to accept.”