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 (3.38), 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 (2.18), 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 Ass (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.
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