MOVIE NEWS – It is not enough anymore to make gazillion dollars on a good, old-fashioned blockbuster. In today’s superhero Hollywood, you must build a franchise, so that your heroes can keep making cameos, pairing off and dying for many lucrative years to come.

Starring Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill as the namesake crusaders, the epic is already one of the most expensive films ever made, with an estimated production and marketing budget topping $400 million. But “Batman v. Superman” has been hammered in early reviews, garnering an abysmal 33 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes from more than 140 critics. A poor showing at the box office could weigh heavily on the super-films that follow, souring the franchise before it began.

It’s too early to say how much money “Batman v. Superman” will take home though analyst estimates suggest it will likely open with about $150 million across more than 6,000 screens: Good, but not stupendous. Analysts say any gross less than $800 million to $1 billion will mark not just a disappointment for the film, but a potential failure to launch for the entire franchise.