If I recall correctly it was because of "Mars needs Moms" was such a dumpster fire they were afraid if would stain their movie if it has Mars in the name.
yeah, it was one of those movies that I think was ruined by the advertising. All the adverts at the time tried to make it seems like a star wars rip off, when it wasn't anything like star wars really.
John Carter inspired the inspirations for Star Wars, including Dune. Heck, if they had advertised it as the story that inspired [list of movies] it would have gone a long way in making it clear that it wasn't a ripoff.
Working out the numbers on IMDB, the estimated budget was $250,000,000. Gross worldwide: $284,139,100. Total from these numbers: $34,139,100.
The number(s) that are not represented, is how much Disney spent to market the movie. And since it was supposed to be their latest tentpole movie franchise, they must have spent the same amount they did on production (and perhaps more,) to market it. This means that Disney might have put $500 million or more into the whole project. Then they would have lost $215,860,900 or more.
I can see why it bombed. It’s one of the very few movies I ever turned off before it was over, and I watch a lot of movies. It was just so dull and had no soul. I could not bring myself to care about what was going on. Haven’t thought about it since, until this thread.