You are wrong. The production budget is covered in large parts by marketing deals. Man of Steel received $170M in marketing partnerships before the movie released. This movie probably already broke even.

I dont know about that, since I have 0 info regarding this I wont comment on it. All Im gona say is Warner expected the absolute minimum BO income from this movie to be 1 billion, anything bellow that is a failure and even if it does just 1 billion it was just pasisble. We are talking about a movie with both the most popular Super Heroes on the planet comming out on the dawn of the Super Hero movies, it was suposed to be able to do over 1.5b maybe even 2b.

whats funny about your comment AND Affleck looking sad in that interview is that I would argue the BEST thing about Batman v Superman WAS his portrayal of Batman.

I heard he did a lot of his own stunts and his fight scenes (especially towards the beginning) were pretty classical Batman in the sense of cleverly taking down enemies. maybe overly brutal, but still.

Affleck has more room to be disappointed by poor reception because he did his part fairly well and actually is fairly respected (he's directed some great films and won an oscar and was pretty damn good in things like Argo).

Cavill on the other hand is a mediocre actor :/ of course he wouldn't be surprised at this point. he's been good in like nothing

No, they expect the movie to make a profit, which it already did. Warner estimated the opening week-end to be $140M and it exceeded that so don't try to come up with BS numbers like $1.5B or $2B.

Well, when I have something finished or almost finished and I know it won't get that much love I will also not expect too much, the question is what I thought how successful it should be when I started with the project. 

This "they expected a profit and nothing else" thinking is just so wrong. Huge companies don't think like that, they aren't happy as long as there is no loss of a single product and their investors will laugh about someone who says that everything is great as long as there is a profit.  There won't be an investor saying "hey, this biggest project ever which costs hundreds of millions, I think it would be great if it will make a profit, I don't care how much"

It's their biggest project since years or maybe ever, it should make a huge profit to reach at least a decent profit margin and even $1bn in revenue will probably only show a small profit (percentual) considering all the expenses and that  a huge part of the revenue doesn't go to them.  

Huge movies are like huge games, they should make a lot of profit or they aren't really a great success. Games like Destiny, CoD and so on won't be a real success if they make only a small (compared to the budget) profit. 

BvsS won't be a financial flop or anything, but it will be probably also not something you can call a real success.  It could also hurt future releases of DC when at least some people will not go in some other movies in the future which they would if they would love BvsS. But that will be probably only a smaller problem as long as the future releases in the DC universe will get a good word of mouth. 

Thats not realy how movie business work, investors know the potential something have and expect that something to live up to it. If Iron Man 3 can make 1.3 B what do you think ppl were expecting this movie to do ? Warner was hopping to do at least Age of Ultrons numbers, realistic if the movie was actualy good it could easilly do 2B.

Also movies that are profitable have to be profitable enought to cover the movies that aren't, most movies aren't profitable. So when these studios release these hughe movies they expect it to do realy well. Also its still highly uncertain that your statment that it already made a profit holds any water, from what I know 007 SPECTER, wich costed less to make, only started being profitable at the 700 M mark more or less. I also read somewhere that the money made with the deals you talk about is generaly spent in its entirety with marketting for the movie itself.

The movie will make a profit thats certain but no amount of damage controll can cover the fact that a Super Hero movie, at the golden age of Super Hero movies, including the 2 most popular super heroes in the planer doing less than Iron Man 3 is a failure. No investor on the planet will be happy with that.

Except that the movie beat the opening week-end expectations domestically by 20%. No matter how you look at this, this movie is highly profitable with the partnership deals, the merchandising and the upcoming home video release.

Iron Man 3 made $1.2B and only 10 movies ever managed that. Not even TDK or TDKR came close. So since you are guessing how much WB wanted to make from this movie, I'll guess $1B.

And golden age of super hero movies? Only 5 superhero movies ever crossed he $1B mark.

My statement about the movie being already profitable makes much more sense that your expectations out of thin air considering that MoS only cost WB $67.5M to product. How much more do you think this one cost?

Seems like you didn't even care to read my first sentence which already was about how WB did obviously not expect too much anymore since they knew the movie won't get a great rating.

But if you would have asked them two years ago what they expect with the biggest budget ever for them (production and marketing) having the two best known super heroes of the planet in it (well, maybe Spider-Man is between them) then I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't have said "hey, it will be great to probably stay behind movies like The Dark Knight even without adjusting it for inflation which would let it look even worse, not to talk about the other super hero movies which did or will do better even with less known characters"

Yes, the movie will be profitable but like I said, it's not only about if it will be profitable but about how profitable it will be and they will make hundreds of millions less in theaters alone as it would make if people would enjoy the movie more. Not to talk about the later releases as digital download and on discs which will be way lower as they would be with more satisfied viewers. 

The movie will maybe make 500m+ less as it could make in the end (talkig about merchandise, ticket sales, disc sales and so on). 500m+ less as some investors would hope for and definitely less as most investors would hope for. 

You can say how great the success but in the end it will maybe reach the minimum people would have expected from it if everything is said and done in some months after ticket sales or in some years after all the other sales. It will be probably one of the best 30 grossing movies of all time at least without adusted ticket prices (which would let films even from 10 years ago have a much higher gross) but it will still only reach maybe the minimum expected. 

Their most expensive movie? It's a tie between this and The Hobbit:BotFA and only $20M more than TDKR. No idea how much marketing costs for those movies though.

TDKR is the follow-up to the comic book movie that's widely regarded as being the best around and still only made marginally more than its predecessor 4 years after that. I don't see how they expected a new one to make much more just 4 years after that.

The movie will be massively profitable. As I said in my previous post, the majority of this movie's production budget will be covered by partnership deals so we have:

$410 production + marketing so marketing costs will be $160M. Assuming 70% of the production budget covered by partnerships, that $75M out of WB's pocket for a total of $235M that WB needs to break even. Right now, the BO is at $530M so about $265M for the studio. That's $30M already. Now add in any merchandising revenue.

As I said massively profitable.