It had nothing to do with the actor. It was more the fact the film came out of nowhere, was poorly marketed, and the trailer made it seem worse than it was, and even then it was an ok film.

Tanooki tail.

Anyway, the movie flopped because there was no build up for it.  Nobody knew it was coming and, even though it's based on a 100 year old series of books, nobody knew what it was about.  The name of the movie doesn't even stand out.  John Carter sounds like the name of the guy that reads the newspaper for three hours at Starbucks.  They should have called it something memorable like Space Boobies:  The Trials of John Carter.

It's a shame, because I hear it's a really good movie.

Which is the exact reason I didn't go see it. I can stomach popcorn movies if I think my kids will be really into it... and they didn't even care about it.

John Carter looked retarded and was horribly advertised, I'm not surprised it flopped. Means nothing for the Uncharted movie.

Generica Carter

Disney would get 55 % procent of the american box office at most and even less then that (could be lot less) overseas. This movie might have to clear 600 to 700 million to break even. It's a flop.

As someone who watched John Carter, I think I understand why it flopped.

I disagree.  I haven't seen the movie but I heard the movie is mediocre.  If everything was the same and the same mediocre movie was made with either Tom Cruise or Will Smith or even Johnny Depp, the US box office opening weekend would have been doubled.

Adding big names to the role list doesn't ensure success, especially if the movie itself is poor and based on poor material. Eragon is a perfect example of this, had some big names and a big budget and still crashed hard because it was simply a bad moive (based on a mediocre - to bad book).
From what I gather, John Carter simply isn't a good moive, nothing more to it.

I don't see how many movies can flop, over the long run. Box office, dvd/blu-ray sales, merchandise, royalties from airing on TV, etc.

I would think most movies that are regarded as "flops" tend to break into profit, eventually. I'm pretty sure I was told that Terminator 3 was considered to have lost money, but I'm sure it's broken even by now.