it lost a considerable amount of money due to its cost. At the time of its release, Disney claimed the film's production budget was $250 million, although tax returns released in 2014 revealed its exact budget was $263.7 million after taking tax credits into account. Before the film opened, analysts predicted the film would be a huge financial failure due to its exorbitant cost combined with production and marketing costs of $350 million, with Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com, noting "John Carter'''s bloated budget would have required it to generate worldwide tickets sales of more than $600 million to break even ... a height reached by only 63 films in the history of moviemaking". Within two weeks of its release, Disney took a $200 million writedown on the film, ranking it among the biggest box-office bombs of all time. Two months after the release, the Walt Disney Company released a statement on its earnings attributing the $161 million decline in the operating income of its Studio Entertainment division to a loss of $84 million in the quarter ending March 2012 "primarily" due to the performance of John Carter and the associated cost write-down. Domestic On March 9, 2012, John Carter opened domestically in over 3,500 theaters, taking in almost $10 million, the highest grosses of any film released that day. It was the only time period for which that would be true. The following day, The Lorax, the previous weekend's box office winner, which had lost that night to John Carter only by around $300,000, reasserted its primacy, grossing $18 million even as Disney's film improved to $12.3 million. The Lorax went on to win the weekend, with $38.8 million to John Carters $30.1 million, which still made it the highest-grossing new release that weekend, easily beating Silent House and A Thousand Words. Domestically, both The Lorax and John Carter were displaced by the next weekend's winner, the newly released 21 Jump Street, which easily outgrossed both. John Carter stayed in all its theaters, but revenues dropped by more than half from the previous weekend, to $13 million. On the film's third weekend, its theater count dropped by approximately 500 as The Hunger Games arrived in theaters with a $152.5 million opening weekend; John Carters receipts again more than halved, down to $5 million. Throughout April, grosses and theaters continued to decline. Following that year's Easter weekend, it dropped out