BvS headed to a 1.95-2.05 multiplier. How this stacks up to all other superhero movies and an explanation of why it's important to look past the total gross
The term "multiplier" describes how much a movie makes in total compared with how much it made in its opening weekend. The higher the multiplier, the better the "legs" a movie has. Higher multipliers strongly suggest that movies have strong word of mouth and potentially a high number of repeat viewings. In other words, the multiplier correlates with how much the public embraced a movie. For a standalone movie, the multiplier is less important to a studio than the total gross; for a movie that is not expected to have a sequel, the studio generally only cares about how much money the movie makes (although a low multiplier might hurt licensing and home video numbers). But for a franchise, the multiplier is critical because it indicates how much the movie is being received by the public and how much of a fan base it is establishing for future movies. Recent comic book movies with high multipliers include Deadpool (2.65 and counting), Ant Man (3.14), Dark Knight (3.3
, Guardians of the Galaxy (3.53), and Batman Begins (4.24).
In contrast, the lowest comic book multipliers are, in order, X-Men Origins (2.11), 2003 Hulk (2.12), 2015 Fantastic Four (2.1
, Green Lantern (2.19), Hellboy 2 (2.2), Amazing Spider Man 2 (2.21), and Spider Man 3 (2.22). The common thread in all of these movies is that each of these movies either killed the franchise and/or had to be rebooted with an entirely different cast. In fact, the lowest multiplier for a movie that had a direct sequel is Kick *** (2.42). Note that Iron Man 3 (2.34) and Age of Ultron (2.40) have lower multipliers and are likely to have a sequel.
So where does BvS stack up? If projects hold up, it will end up with a total gross of between $325 and $340. That would between 1.95 and 2.05. BvS would have to gross $350 million to beat the multiplier of the movies with the 2nd lowest multiplier, X-Men Origins (2.11), which looks like it will now be impossible. It is important to note that BvS has come in on the lowest end of expectations on every metric (e.g., hold percentages, daily grosses, weekday grosses, etc.). However, even at the lowest projected number, it looks like BvS is likely to beat the movie with the lowest multiplier, which is Watchmen at 1.95.
This is all to say that it would be very surprising, not to mention ill-advised, for DC/WB to go forward with the franchise without making significant adjustments. Every other studio has either scrapped a franchise or made significant changes to movies that had far higher multipliers than BvS. Also, people should be careful not to simply look at the total gross of a movie to gauge its success, particularly franchise movies. For instance, although BvS will have a similar gross to Guardians of the Galaxy and be in the ball park of Deadpool, the high multipliers for those movies indicate that fans crave sequels or are eager to watch similar movies. BvS's low multiplier suggest that people were curious to check out the movie and/or were lured in with the heavy marketing, but ultimately decided that the movie was not for them.