Batman V. Superman: Buy The Hype With This Stock?

After a soft 2015 for Time Warner Inc (NYSE: TWX)'s Warner films, "Batman V. Superman" is finally debuting on Friday, kicking off a series of 10 DC Comics films the next five years. Given the importance of BvS for the DC franchise, the UBS Evidence Lab undertook and shared an analysis of social media data to determine the movie's potential.

The firm projects a $150 million to $200 million U.S. opening weekend, considerably above recent industry tracking estimates of $120 million to $140 million. They arrived at this conclusion by analyzing several elements including YouTube trailer views and Facebook likes. The evidence suggested a social profile similar to "Avengers: Age of Ultron," which had a $191 million open in May 2015, and above "Deadpool," which had a $132 million opening in mid-February.

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The analysts, led by Doug Mitchelson, are assuming a $175 million U.S. opening and global box office of $1.04 billion. This suggests upside to the company's EPS guidance for 2016. After undertaking a bottoms-up analysis of 91 films for Warners between 2013 and 2017, the analysts think their 2016-2017 Warners estimates were low -- including a "Tarzan loss" this summer.

Consequently, the analysts also raised their 2016 EPS estimate by $0.05 to $5.41, and their 2017 EPS estimate by $0.06 to $6.10.

UBS maintains a Buy rating and $87.00 price target on shares of Time Warner.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.

Image credit: Televisione Streaming, Flickr