Jeff Bezos is so rich that the value of $1 to the average person is about $88,000 to the Amazon founder.

Needless to say, a $12 million home renovation in Washington, DC, isn't a budget crusher.

In 2016, Bezos paid $23 million in cash for the property in DC's exclusive Kalorama neighborhood, home to the Obamas as well as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

While the property doesn't appear to offer much privacy in the front — it was the site of the Textile Museum for about a century — it includes two separate structures with nearly 27,000 square feet of living space and a spacious backyard.

The larger of the two homes, the Wood House, will be for entertaining guests, while the Pope House will serve as the family's living quarters when they're in town. The Bezos' home base is in Medina, Washington — a secluded, 5.3-acre compound on the shores of Lake Washington.

The renovation plans were approved in September and are now underway. Below, check out the floor plan of Bezos' future mansion in Washington, DC.

Spyce is a new restaurant in Boston powered by a robotic kitchen that cooks your food in three minutes or less. MIT graduates Michael Farid, Brady Knight, Luke Schlueter, and Kale Rogers created the robotic technology and restaurant concept while in college. Known as the "Spyce Boys", the founders were inspired by their experiences as hungry student-athletes on tight budgets. The robotic kitchen is actually designed to prepare the food, cook it, and even clean up. Following is a transcript of the video.

Spyce is located in Boston. Their robotic kitchen cooks your food in three minutes or less. The fast casual restaurant was created by four MIT graduates.

Michael Farid: As robotics-obsessed engineers, we set out to create a new and efficient way of cooking food.

The robotic kitchen serves salad and grain bowls. Here's how it works.

You order from an electronic kiosk. Spyce offers vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free bowls. There are 7 customizable options. A screen displays your order while the robotic kitchen gets to work.

Luke Schlueter: Our woks cook by constantly tumbling your food, which provides a really nice and even sear. They're heated with induction and we have temperature control to perfectly cook your meal every time.

The only human in the kitchen is the "garde manger" or "garnish employee". They add your toppings.

The bowls are $7.50 each. The founders were inspired by their experiences as hungry college students.

Brady Knight: From our humble starts in our fraternity basement, we developed a prototype that really sort of proved we could build something that can create delicious, high-quality meals.

Spyce 's robotic kitchen is designed to cook, serve, and clean up. After creating the robotic kitchen, the founders focused on food quality.

Kale Rogers: We knew we needed some culinary excellence, to really bring this restaurant concept to life.

The founders recruited Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud to be Spyce's culinary director.

Chef Daniel Boulud: I needed to come to Boston. I discovered that the robotic kitchen brings precision, consistency, taste, and also freshness to the preparation.

Currently, Spyce only has one location. So you'll have to visit Boston to try food from a robotic kitchen.

Are robots the future of the food industry?

Mustang's with V8 engines are some of the absolute best deals in high-performance motoring currently available. The GT with the Performance Pack Level 2 adds just what a racer wants: grip, grip, and more grip.

The track at the Monticello Motor Club was damp when I drove it, but even then I could feel the locked-down stability of the GT's combination of tire, aero, and suspension. You really attack and turn fast laps in a car this powerful if you can forget about taxing the rear end and having to compensate for oversteer.

The Mustang GT's partnering of horsepower and torque means that you can tackle a course with limited long straights in third gear; you won't lack for oomph when you need it, and you won't threaten the redline on the tachometer, which sits at 7500 rpm. In practice, I could focus on steering, braking, and throttle rather that worrying about hitting my shifts or matching engine revs. This is something I always enjoy.

The Performance Pack Level 2 adds a few grand to the Mustang GT's price tag, but the carmaker says that's to continually maintain the relevance of the platform, which is now over 50 years old. For a track-obsessed owners, this package is definitely worth checking out.

In March, during a speech to a group of elementary school students, I asked a boy in the audience to name a hobby he was passionate about pursuing.

"Playing Fortnite," he said.

His answer caught me by surprise, as I'd never heard of Fortnite before in my life. Little did I know, he was referring to the hottest multi-platform game of 2018, and I was extremely late to the party.

I played my share of video games as a kid. Growing up in the 90s, my favorite consoles were the Nintendo DS, GameCube, and the Wii (which my mother bought after standing outside of our local Best Buy store for six hours).

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I was always a fan of light hearted, feel-good games, such as Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, and MySims, all of which are mild compared to the action-packed style of Fortnite.

During my first playthrough of what Mat Piscatella, an entertainment software analyst at NPD Research, called "the biggest game of the year," I quickly learned that Fortnite boils down to one word: survival. The object of the game is to scrounge for materials in open terrain while fighting to be the last player alive.

The Fortnite lobby. Chental-Song Bembry

I downloaded the free-to-play iOS version of the game, Fortnite Battle Royale, and competed in a 100-player battle for the Victory Royale prize.

I opened the Fortnite Battle Royale app and was taken to the home screen (known as the "lobby"), which displayed a fierce-looking avatar who looked armed and ready for combat. By toggling through each of the lobby's tabs, I was able to get a better look at my avatar's outfit and weaponry options, which were limited with my free mobile version (the app has to make money somehow).

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I finished outfitting my character, and it was time for me to dive into the game. Fortnite gives you the option to compete in a "squad," duo, solo, or 50 vs. 50 game. I joined a squad, ready to put my teamwork skills to the test.

Skydiving to the battle. Chental-Song Bembry

Once my "playthrough" began, my squad and I were dropped in a grassy field. We had only a few seconds to gather as many raw materials as possible to later build our forts. I was easily able to grasp the touch screen controls, which involved basic swipes and zooms to move my avatar around and gather materials.

Immediately following the first material hunt, I was transported onto a flying bus that was suspended by a giant hot air balloon. Seconds later, my squad and I were skydiving out of the bus and onto the main battle field to fight for our lives.

I frantically maneuvered my avatar around the field and used my axe (one of the few tools I got with my free download) to break trees, houses, and cars for raw materials. Sadly, I got way too excited about the axe and forgot all about my squad members and our goal to survive. Before I knew it, my avatar was eliminated by another player's assault rifle and my shot at victory was over.

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Disappointed by my failed attempt at the squad battle, I tried my hand at the solo battle. This time around, I was able to play without feeling pressured to make a contribution to my squad. However, just like my first playthrough, I was shot down again within a matter of minutes due to my lack of skill and experience.

I was eliminated due to my lack of experience. Chental-Song Bembry

Don't let the cartoonish graphics fool you — Fortnite Battle Royale is a challenging game that requires stealth, strategy, teamwork, and patience in order to succeed.

I also thought it was cool that game updates often include nods to social trends. One of the most popular updates was the addition of Thanos, the villain from the Marvel blockbuster "Avengers: Infinity War," who made a guest appearance on the Fortnite battlefield for a week in May.

For those unfamiliar with gaming, I definitely suggest claiming your spot on the flying bus and diving into the world of survival.

Warning: MAJOR spoilers below if you haven't seen "Deadpool 2."

The birth of the X-Force was in the trailers, posters, and almost all other marketing for "Deadpool 2."

But if you saw the latest Marvel hit over the weekend, you know the formation of a grittier version of the X-Men didn't happen the way the movie's marketing teased it.

Let's set the stage. In "Deadpool 2," the Merc With a Mouth finds himself up against a soldier from the future, Cable, who is driven to kill a young mutant named Russell. Deadpool, by this point in the movie, has alienated himself from the only X-Men members who would talk to him, and he decides to form his own super team to stop Cable. He calls it X-Force.

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Enter the mutants Bedlam (Terry Crews), Shatterstar (Lewis Tan), Zeitgeist (Bill Skarsgård), Vanisher, Domino (Zazie Beetz), and Peter (Rob Delaney). Well, Peter isn't a mutant, but he wowed Deadpool at the audition. They team up with Deadpool and head out to take on Cable and spring Russell from prison. They all skydive from a large plane to pull off their plan.

Almost all of this is teased in the trailers. But what happens next is one of the biggest shocks of the movie.

Because of strong winds on the day Deadpool decides to do the jump, his X-Force mates veer off course, and they all suffer horrific deaths — except for Domino because her superpower is being really, really lucky. Bedlam glides facefirst into the windshield of a bus. Shatterstar is chopped up by helicopter blades. Peter dies after being covered in the acid vomit spewed by Zeitgeist just before he's sucked into a wood chipper. And Vanisher flies right into power lines — with the electrical shock revealing he's played by Brad Pitt.

The sequence is one of the most memorable from the movie and is the biggest example of the lengths Ryan Reynolds and the director David Leitch went to give audiences a very different superhero sequel.

Business Insider talked to Terry Crews about what it was like to be a part of the movie's biggest joke, why there was fight footage of Bedlam in the trailers if it wasn't going to be in the movie, and whether anyone on the set knew Brad Pitt was playing Vanisher.

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Jason Guerrasio: Going into doing the movie, were they straight up with you about the fate of Bedlam?

Terry Crews: I knew everything. We were trolling the world. That was the whole point. And the big thing was to keep it a secret. That was the hardest part. I didn't even tell my wife what was going to happen. My son was like, "What happens?" and I was like, "I'm not going to tell you."

This specific shot of Terry Crews in the trailer was from a scene everyone knew would never be in the movie. Fox Guerrasio: So what many people, like me, are wondering after seeing the movie is what is that footage of you knocking someone out in the trailer? Did you guys shoot more X-Force footage?

Crews: [Laughs.] Yes. We shot a whole scene that we knew was never going to be in the movie. I'm telling you, it's the biggest troll of all time. I couldn't believe we were going to do this.

Guerrasio: They were just going to use that footage for the marketing knowing it wasn't going to be in the movie.

Crews: Exactly. Everything that we shot that isn't in the movie was done to fool everybody to think that me and the other members of X-Force were going to be in the movie the whole time.

Guerrasio: That's amazing.

Crews: And I felt horrible. The fans were excited. But, to me, the purpose was to give the audience something they would never expect. And it was crazy to keep all that a secret. When we were shooting in Vancouver I had to walk around with blankets over me because there were spies. I just got a few pages, sometimes even just a few lines of the script. Our goal was not to let anyone find out what we were going to do. Because the fanboy culture wants to find out everything before it happens.

Guerrasio: So you're at the world premiere of the movie, you are one of the few people in that room that knows it's coming. What was the reaction when the X-Force start dropping one by one?

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Crews: When I was first on-screen the audience went crazy, and I just felt so bad because it's basically a giant practical joke. [Laughs.] So I'm just bracing for it and then we jump out of the plane and our parachutes start going wild, gradually you notice the audience can tell something is wrong. As we died one by one I could feel in the audience people realizing that this isn't the start of X-Force that they thought they were getting. There was just this audible gasp. When they show Deadpool walking by me and people were trying to revive me by the bus, people around me in the theater were just like, "What the?" It was so good.

Terry Crews' Bedlam character and the other X-Force members were even featured on a "Deadpool 2" poster. Fox Guerrasio: Did you guys shoot different deaths, or was that always Bedlam's fate?

Crews: That was it. He was always going to get hit by a bus.

Guerrasio: How about the reveal of who Vanisher was? Did you know it was Brad Pitt before seeing the movie?

Crews: That was a total surprise for me.

Guerrasio: So you guys on set doing the scenes didn't know?

Crews: Nope. I did not know. I had no idea.

Guerrasio: How did they shoot the Vanisher character? Was it just a guy in a head-to-toe green suit wearing a parachute sitting with you guys in the plane scene?

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Crews: Not even that. In the scene where we are all sitting around they just had two indented pillows to make it look like Vanisher was sitting there. And then in the plane scene there was a harness rigged to look like a body was wearing the parachute. There wasn't anyone in a green suit. We were just acting like there was a person there the whole time.

This is what everyone has to appreciate, the level of which this whole thing was done is on another level. There were layers upon layers. This is "The Matrix"-meets-"Inception"-type level. And this is why it's so satisfying. At this point in the superhero genre everyone has seen everything. Nothing rivals what we've done here.

Guerrasio: So the future of Bedlam, are you just waiting for a phone call?

Crews: I'm waiting. There's nothing that will prevent me from being in stuff, but there's nothing that says I'm locked up for seven pictures. This is Marvel. I'm open to anything and everything. And it's funny, some folks are like this is my only shot at a franchise. But hey, Josh Brolin is now two different characters in the Marvel universe — Cable and Thanos. Michael B. Jordan did "Fantastic Four" and "Black Panther." There's no limits here, that I can see. To be honest, I love that Bedlam is a character a lot of people don't know about because hopefully we can grow it into something. I'm ready for anything. And with what is shown at the end of the movie, the way they are fooling with time—

Guerrasio: Ah, I was waiting for you to give me this tease.

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Crews: [Laughs.] There's always ways to bring me back.

Guerrasio: It's really a testament to you guys keeping this under wraps. As you know, this is an industry of big egos, one of you guys could have been so upset that you all are only in a few minutes of the movie following all that marketing hype they could just leaked everything.

Crews: Oh, easy. It all could have fallen apart at any time. The other day me and Ryan hugged each other and he was just like, "Thank you." It feels good.

When MoviePass announced a radical change to its business model last summer — offering monthly subscriptions for around $10 a month to see a single movie at a theater, once per day — the major multiplex chains instantly opposed it. AMC Theaters, the biggest chain in the world, even announced that it was consulting its lawyers to find a way to not accept MoviePass.

But for independent theater owners, and theaters run by non-profits, the reaction to MoviePass' bold new endeavor has been a feeling of cautious optimism. 


Unlike the large chains, arthouse theaters are more willing to take chances to potentially get more people through the turnstiles, as they historically have constantly had to find ways to keep the doors open. This has led to some theater owners fully buying into MoviePass' popularity, going as far as doing partnerships with the company. However, there are many also keeping an arm's distance and waiting to see if the company can prove it can overcome its financial woes.

"We don't promote it, we don't oppose it, we want to make our customers happy and if they want to use MoviePass then we do it," Dylan Skolnick, co-director of Cinema Arts Centre, an arthouse in Long Island, told Business Insider. 


Cinema Arts Centre. CinemaTreasures.org And that's the same sentiment made by most theaters owners and marketing heads Business Insider spoke to. Theaters are reimbursed the full ticket price from MoviePass for the tickets their customers purchase. Independent theaters are happy to take the money MoviePass is giving them and willing to take the grief from their customers when the MoviePass app doesn't work or there are claims of being overcharged — as long as MoviePass keeps sending the money.

"My only concern is if this company does shut down that the customers who have gotten used to it and love it will go back to how they felt about movie tickets," said David Huffman, director of marketing for Cleveland Cinemas, which operates 46 screens at 7 locations. "I fear the backlash will be on us."

But then there's the concern from some who wonder what happens if MoviePass can sustain itself and gets bigger. Some independently owned theaters offer memberships to theatergoers for discount tickets and other perks. MoviePass now puts a wrinkle in some of those offers. 


"That realization hit me a few weeks ago," said John Ewing, cofounder and director of the non-profit Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. "I realized the main perk for being a member of ours is to save money on ticket prices and a number of regulars do have MoviePass. So we might be hurt when it comes time for membership renewal. Though I would like to think that these people are in our court enough that they would still support us."

One option for some of these theaters would be to discontinue using MoviePass, but that comes with its own dilemma — as AMC's lawyers likely learned. Because MoviePass works through MasterCard that means theaters would have to discontinue accepting MasterCard as well. 


"You really don't have any choice," Skolnick said. "We already annoy people a little because we don't accept American Express."

Then there are those theaters that have gone into a partnership with MoviePass.

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In late March, MoviePass announced it was partnering with one of the country's largest arthouse chains, Landmark Theatres. MoviePass is now integrated into the ticket system for the chain's 255 screens in 53 theaters in 27 markets.

MoviePass members who use the service at a Landmark theater receive perks they don't get at other theaters, like e-ticketing and advanced seat reservations through the app. In return, MoviePass receives a discount on the tickets it has to pay for.

It's similar to a deal MoviePass has been doing with Studio Movie Grill. The in-theater dining chain that has 314 screens in 30 locations in 9 states agreed to a partnership with MoviePass in 2016, long before the app slashed its price to $9.95 last August.

Studio Movie Grill founder and CEO Brian Schultz has zero regrets. Because his chain was one of the few that partnered with MoviePass before the onslaught of new subscribers, he's been able to track how it's helped his company and it's striking.

"We're seeing more exploration on the smaller indie films but we're also seeing pretty high attendance on non-peak third and fourth week on the big movies," Schultz said of MoviePass usage at Studio Movie Grill. "It's driving us off-peak."

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Schultz said that attendance due to MoviePass for big opening weekends like "Avengers: Infinity War" or "Deadpool 2" was very low due to the high volume of presale orders for those movies. But where he's seen a spike in MoviePass usage is for those same titles when audiences return to see the movie again the following weeks.

Studio Movie Grill. CinemaTreasures.org The push of MoviePass during those low traffic periods helped Studio Movie Grill score record attendance in 2017.

Schultz did not go into specifics on what his partnership deal with MoviePass entails, only saying that on "incremental attendance" from MoviePass he pays them a fee.

"We don't want to share in the revenue, what we've asked exhibitors is to give us the same bulk rate discount they would give anyone who is going to buy $20,000 to $100,000 worth of tickets a month," said MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe, who compared what they want to the 20%-25% discount Costco receives for selling AMC tickets in bulk. "The bottom line is it's really in exchange for us driving a whole bunch of more people to your theater at our cost."

Lowe said that currently MoviePass has partnered with independent theaters representing 2,000 screens and hopes to get to 5,000 screens by the end of the year.

However, even if MoviePass grows substantially in the coming years — it currently boasts that it accounts for 6% of the domestic box office — people who work in the movie theater space tell Business Insider it would be quite difficult for the company to make a deal where it would get a taste of box-office profits from exhibitors. That's mainly because theaters see so little already.

"The general percentage that the distributor gets is usually between 35% and 40% of the box office, it can be a little higher," veteran movie booker Jessica Rosner said. "If you're the venue and MoviePass wants a percentage of what's left? That's crazy."

Numerous theaters voiced a concern to Business Insider that MoviePass' next move may be to try and take a percentage of concessions made by theaters (which is the lifeblood of movie theaters). Lowe said currently MoviePass has no plans to propose a partnership where it would receive a percentage of concessions that were driven by MoviePass subscribers.

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Despite the ongoing discussion of how a popular service like MoviePass can make money in a business where the pie has been divided so many ways for so many decades, everyone universally agrees that the service is good for theater attendance — which suffered a 25-year low in the US last year.

"The industry needs to have years where we have attendance increases or else we can't be a healthy business," Schultz said. "We can talk about box office and other things, but we need to drive people through the door. MoviePass could be an important piece of driving that. Studios are trying to innovate, I think exhibitors should try to innovate and I like ideas that drive more people to the box office."

Have a tip about MoviePass or anything else? Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Manny Medina is the CEO of a hot Seattle startup called Outreach. The company is growing like gangbusters, from about 170 employees and 1,200 customers a year ago to about 300 employees and 2,400 customers today.

And Outreach just raised another $65 million ($125 million total raised so far) to fund more growth, too.

Medina is a former exec from Microsoft and worked, back in the day, at Amazon on the team that founded Amazon Web Services, Amazon's juggernaut cloud computing service.

But this is his first run as a CEO and founder. Often, when startups grow this fast, particularly under their founder CEOs, they hit predictable growing pains. As employees pour into the org, communication plummets. Then project management suffers, the right hand stops knowing what the left is doing, and employees grow frustrated and start complaining about the company and its management.

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But for now Medina has a perfect 100% rating on Glassdoor while 97% would recommend the company to a friend. He knows that his perfect CEO rating probably won't last forever, that it will be impossible to keep everyone happy all the time.

Still, he shared some tips with Business Insider to help explain why his rating is so high and to give other managers useful advice to keep their team as happy as possible.

1. He personally greets every employee every morning, walking through the office to see everyone.

Medina is a high-energy, cheerful sort of guy, so his greeting comes in the form of a fist bump to each an every employee he sees when he comes into the office in the morning.

He began the tradition when the company was tiny and struggling to stay alive. The fist bump was a way to raise spirits, determination and energy, he told us.

AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty"It's a way to look everyone in the eye and say, 'We're going to kill it," Medina told Business Insider. "It creates the connection, early in the morning, when there's not a whole lot of noise."

It worked, too. The company turned around in 2015 and has been going gangbusters ever since.

Even now that the company is 300 employees (not all of them located at the headquarters office), he continues morning fist-bump tradition.

A fist bump might not be every manager's style, but the basic premise of a cheerful daily greeting to every person on the team before the day runs away can be adapted by anyone.

When you smile, it boosts your mood and the mood of the people you've smiled at. It makes you appear more courteous and likeable, and, most surprising, it also makes you appear more competent, research from the University of Missouri-Kansas City found.

2. He learns people's names.

"I do make an effort to memorize everyone's names. I know 300 first names and you can test me on that," he laughed. Obviously, the more people a manager oversees the more difficult it is to memorize everyone's names. But research shows that our brains become more engaged when we hear our first names.

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So, to the extent that this is possible, it's worth the effort to learn as many names as possible.

3. He sends a weekly email of personal thoughts which humanizes him and the job of CEO.

"I send an email to the entire company every Sunday: How did my week go? What did I learn? Maybe a shout out. The emails are my point of view, where I just talk about what happened that week, top of mind, as if we had a beer together," he said.

Outreach IO CEO Manuel Medina Manuel Medina linkedin Medina told us that as the company has grown, and his job as CEO has grown, he has wanted to drop the email, as it was cutting into his time with his family. He mentioned his desire to drop the email to his CMO and the CMO told him not to stop it until they polled the employees.

"85% of the employees said they read the letter and didn't want it to stop, and the other 15% didn't answer the survey," he said. That clinched it. Employees liked it, so the email stayed.

Whether a weekly personal email is your style or not, the lesson here is that regular, personalized communication is the cornerstone of good communication. And this is not "messaging," although good leaders do need to be articulate the company's mission and priorities and repeat those messages often. This communicating is about interacting as a fellow human being, helping your staff understand why you make the decisions that you make.

Research shows that good communication has a massive impact on the workplace.

Robert Half's Happy Work report finds that managers who communicate well create camaraderie and that camaraderie leads to happier, more engaged employees.

Earlier this year, Inrix released their comprehensive list of the most congested cities in the world, based on 2017 statistics. Around the world, traffic congestion is increasingly problematic, with drivers in some cities spending upwards of 100 hours per year sitting in peak time traffic. Not only is this costing valuable time, but it is costing billions of dollars as well.

Of the 1,360 cities studied, Los Angeles was deemed the most congested city in the world for the second year running. See what other cities made the top seven:

It turns out "Star Wars" is not bulletproof.

The beloved franchise released its latest "A Star Wars Story" movie over Memorial Day weekend by telling the origin story of the space scoundrel Han Solo, and it greatly underperformed.

"Solo: A Star Wars Story" earned an estimated $83 million domestically over the weekend and is projected to take in $101 million by Memorial Day, according to Exhibitor Relations. That's $29 million off what the industry had for the movie's low-end projection.

In the middle of last week, "Solo" was projected to earn $130 million to $150 million on 4,381 screens. If that held, "Solo" would be set up as the latest "Star Wars" movie to have a record-breaking box-office opening — taking the crown from 2007's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," the Memorial Day record holder with $139.8 million.

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But by the end of Friday, Disney hinted that the weekend wouldn't go according to plan as it drastically adjusted that projection to a range of $105 million to $115 million over the four-day weekend.

A $101 million performance by Memorial Day would be strong for a movie at any other studio — especially over a holiday weekend when audiences would rather be outside than in a theater — but for a "Star Wars" movie this just doesn't cut it.

"Solo" went into the weekend on a strong note. The movie took in $14.1 million at Thursday-night previews, a record for Memorial Day (beating "At World's End," which took in $13.2 million). But there were signs the movie would not be a huge moneymaker like other "Star Wars" movies that have been released since Disney bought the franchise.

Even if "Solo" hit the high end of its original industry projections, it wasn't likely to have the opening weekend of 2016's "Rogue One," a film with the "Star Wars Story" branding that took in $155 million.

"Solo" had a disappointing opening weekend. Disney The opening three-day performance by "Solo" is the lowest for a "Star Wars" movie since 2002's "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones," which took in $80 million. But back in 2002 that was quite a feat — counting inflation, that would be a $126.1 million opening in 2018.

"Solo" may have had in-production drama — the movie's original directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, were fired over creative differences and replaced by Ron Howard — but you can't equate that with its poor box office.

"Rogue One" had its own drama, as the director Gareth Edwards had to take a backseat to the more experienced helmer Tony Gilroy during reshoots for the movie, and that went on to earn over $1 billion at the global box office.

The weak performance by "Solo" has been attributed more to three big obstacles: timing, "Star Wars" fatigue, and lackluster reviews.

Opening over the Memorial Day weekend, "Star Wars" was thrown headfirst into a cutthroat summer movie season (the previously released hits "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Deadpool 2" being the main combatants). It's a much more competitive time at multiplexes than December, which had been the home for "Star Wars" movies since 2015's "The Force Awakens."

Also, over the past decade American moviegoers have been less inclined to visit the theater over Memorial Day weekend, which is viewed by much of the country as a chance to be outside in the warming weather.

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" had one of the lowest openings in the franchise when it was released during last year's Memorial Day weekend. Disney Last year, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" opened over Memorial Day weekend and took in $78.4 million from Friday to Monday. That was just under its projections of $80 million to $85 million and the lowest opening for a "Pirates" movie since the first one, 2003's "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" ($46.6 million).

Other movies that opened over Memorial Day weekend and were DOA include "Tomorrowland" ($33 million opening weekend), "Alice Through the Looking Glass" ($26.8 million), and "X-Men: Apocalypse" ($65.7 million).

In this field, the "Solo" opening doesn't look so bad. But the rules change when you talk about "Star Wars."

Yes, "Star Wars" fatigue is a thing. With "Solo" opening five months after "The Last Jedi," audiences just weren't motivated for another story from the saga that quickly, even one about one of its most legendary characters.

You could make the argument that Marvel released "Avengers: Infinity War" two months after "Black Panther" and there certainly wasn't any fatigue with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But that instance featured an origin story followed by an established Avengers movie. It also didn't hurt that "Infinity War" practically starred every character from the MCU. Audiences weren't exhausted; they were pumped up for it. Also, things are a lot easier when both of the two movies are great.

If "Solo" were a better movie, this would all be moot. But with its 71% rating on the reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest score for a "Star Wars" film since "Attack of the Clones," it did not possess the "have to see it first weekend" hype of the other "Star Wars" movies.

For the most part, President Obama is staying firmly on the high road when speaking publicly. He avoids mentioning President Trump's name, directly criticising his policy decisions, or responding to whatever Twitter insults Trump may be throwing his way.

And Obama's message to the people remains clear and hopeful: be good to each other, find common ground, make decisions based on facts, not myths and stereotypes, and America's future is as bright as ever.

But as the Trump administration has been vocally contemptuous of Obama, No. 44 can't resist throwing just a touch of shade now and then.

So it was when speaking on stage on Wednesday in Las Vegas to a crowd of about 4,000 tech professionals at a tech conference hosted by identity security company Okta.

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When Okta CEO Todd McKinnon asked Obama what it felt like not to be President anymore, without missing a beat, No. 44 replied, "It's pretty good."

He said, "I don't miss the trappings of the presidency," such as people saluting him or "trumpets" playing when he enters a room. (The song "Hail to the Chief" is often played when the POTUS attends a public event.)

When the Obamas moved out of the White House and into their own home, he said he found himself adjusting to regular life.

"I'm trying to figure out how the coffee maker works. I'm fighting Michelle and Sasha for closet space, which I lost," he joked. And "that felt fine."

The biggest adjustment was getting used to a normal pace of work. He spent eight years of hyper stressful days, where work was often dealing with a life-or-death crises. (He made the job seem just like it was portrayed in the old "West Wing" TV series).

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But now, "Everything moves in slow motion. You leave the presidency and you are like Neo [from the Matrix] in the end, where bullets are coming at you and they are super slow and you just put your hand up," he joked.

But the rest of the world doesn't move that fast.

For instance, when Obama's book publisher lawyer called to say he urgently needed to meet with publishers chomping on the bit to bid for his next book, Obama replied, "Ok, how about tomorrow?" And the lawyer stammered that he meant like, in the next two weeks. Two weeks seemed like an eternity to Obama. "Where I came from, if you don't do something right away, someone will die," he explained.

The best part of life after the presidency is the sleep, he said. And that's where he threw a subtle criticism of the current Oval office occupant.

"I get much more sleep now," he said, adding (emphasis ours) "There is a physical and mental element to being president, if you are a doing a good job, if you are serious about the job."

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Obama was referring to Trump's reputation for arriving to work at 11 a.m., leaving by six and regularly taking off work to play golf. Trump has played golf over 100 times and counting, in the year and a half since he took the oath of office, according to some reports.

The audience of tech professionals got the drift of this criticism and laughed, and Obama continued: "I'm just saying what I found, that if you are reading all your materials and your briefing books and going through the whole [decision making process], then it's a grueling job. Five hours of sleep for eight years."

That last bit refers to Trump's reputation for not reading his daily intelligence briefing report, preferring someone to tell him what's in it, instead.

So Obama says he's loving his post president life for "physically having time to rest and read."

And yet, Obama says he's still got a bit of Neo in him, meaning he can still work super fast. That has left him with time and energy to take on more projects, he said, such as launching the Obama Foundation, which focuses on training young leaders, or his new deal with Netflix, where he and Michelle Obama will be producing shows about interesting and inspiring people and projects.

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More from President Obama's talk on Wednesday.