In the case of John Carter, they had big plans for a franchise and they park area but a change in Disney leadership meant they needed to kill the stuff the prior guy had going and they undercut the marketing and by avoiding the ‘of Mars’ in the title it just sounded generic and uninteresting.

I don’t know if it would have been a massive financial success since the studio meddling undercut a little of solid characterizations and ran up the budget, but competebt marketing certainly would have helped.