Analysis: 'Man of Steel' garnered better pre-release buzz than 'Iron Man 3'

Iron Man fans may be more numerous, but Superman fans are more hopeful. According to General Sentiment, a leading social analytics firm that analyzes more than 60 million sources of digital content every day, Superman fans are generating major positive buzz around director Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. EW has partnered with General Sentiment to develop an aggregate score to report — not just on what is trending in social media — but on what users are actually saying on social networks.

During the two weeks prior to Man of Steel‘s debut week, fans tweeted about the film 121,864 times. While that pales in comparison to the number of tweets Iron Man 3 garnered (340,347) around its release, the tone of Man of Steel‘s buzz was substantially more positive, and about two-out-of-three user mentions (about 66.5 percent) casting the film in a positive light. Meanwhile, Iron Man 3 earned more mixed pre-release buzz with a 56.4 HIT score, which is somewhat surprising given Iron Man’s fan-favorite character status with Marvel fans.

Using a 100-point scale for each film — a score of 50 being neutral, a score of 51 and higher skewing positive, while scores of 49 and lower skew more negative, General Sentiment and EW can catch the sentiment of the social chatter – both positive and negative. Check out the HIT score below.

With mixed reviews, it seems likely that Man of Steel‘s score may decline a bit in the coming days — but given that fan hopes were so high headed into the frame, Man of Steel appears poised for a robust box-office debut. I’m currently predicting a $132 million frame — and we’ll see if that’s too high, too low, or right on the money over the course of the weekend.

Read more:

‘Man of Steel’: EW Review

Box office preview: How high will ‘Man of Steel’ fly?