The critical savaging that surrounded Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice appears not to have put Ben Affleck off from getting into the batsuit once again.

Warner Bros has confirmed that Affleck will both star and direct in a standalone Batman film, in addition to his commitments in playing the caped crusader in two forthcoming Justice League films with the first to launch next year.

The announcement was made by Warner Bros boss Kevin Tsujihara at the CinemaCon movie industry convention in Las Vegas on Tuesday, who said the studio is set to release 10 movies from its DC Comics stable by 2020.

Rumours have been swirling since last July that Affleck would step up to the plate with a new Batman film which he would write, direct and star in.

It seems the critical drubbing of Batman v Superman and the social media mocking of "Sad Ben Affleck" appears not to have discouraged him from his involvement with the caped crusader.

The Zack Snyder epic released last month can holds the inauspicious claim of having the biggest superhero movie opening ever with $US422.5 million worldwide swiftly followed by one of the biggest box-office drop-offs of any blockbuster, dropping 69 per cent in the US by the following weekend.

However, although it looks likely to fall short of the prized $1-billion mark at the global box-office, its current receipts are at $US785,788,223. Not a bad return, all up.

Laughing all the way to the bank: Other critically panned cash cows  

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

Despite a continous stream of negative reviews, the Michael Bay-helmed Transformers franchise refuses to die off, with a fifth instalment to drop next year, followed by a further two in 2018 and 2019. The last outing, Transformers: Age of Extinction, got tagged "the worst and most worthless Transformers movie yet" by Peter Travers from Rolling Stone. Worthless artistically maybe, but at the box-office it ranks the 15th biggest earner of all time with a return of $US1,104,054,072.

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) 

Luckily the quality of Star Wars: The Force Awakens has washed away some of the pain dogging fans of the series which veered off course with the prequel trilogy that kicked off with The Phantom Menace. Critics were not impressed with the storyline, and poor old Jar Jar Binks copping the brunt of much of the negativity, but it's another critically savaged film which crossed the $1 billion mark, with a box-office score of $US1,027,044,677.

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

To be fair, the source material was a pretty bad starting point although it unquestionably proved to be an insanely popular novelty item that smashed records. Critics were harsh about the on-screen version of E.L. James's saucy novel, noting that watching the S&M-themed drama was a form of torture in itself, but still it pulled in $US571,006,128 at the box-office. Buckle up, two sequels are on their way.

The Da Vinci Code (2003) 

Another publishing phenomenon that quickly made its way to the big screen, Dan Brown's thriller emerged at the movies with Ron Howard directing Tom Hanks as symbiologist Robert Langdon on the trail of dodgy religious shenanigans. Time Out's Trevor Johnston said: "Completing the trail of cryptic clues simply becomes an end in and of itself – think 'Sudoku: The Movie' – with little in the way of whimsy, star chemistry or excitement to enliven the dour plod." Still it scored a rather commendable holy grail of $US758,239,851 at the box-office.

Armageddon (1998)

Another Ben Affleck blockbuster although it sits far back in the vault, this sci-fi disaster film teamed up Affleck, Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi and Will Patton as slo-mo-walking blue-collar drillers assigned by NASA to stop a massive asteroid heading for earth. The esteemed Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert named it one of his most hated films of all time, saying, "The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out." Ouch. But the box-office said otherwise with an out-of-this-world $US553,709,788.

Box-office revenues: boxofficemojo.com.