Star Wars: Episode II - Attack Of The Clones has set a new opening record in Japan, taking a gross box office of $13.8m over the two-day weekend.

The sci-fi adventure attracted a massive 1,075,287 admissions to reach $13.8m (Y1.6bn) from a record high number of screens - 630, over the Saturday/Sunday weekend .

Episode II beat out Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone ($13.4m from 1,390,525 admissions) to become the biggest ever opener in Japan. Other films in the all-time opening weekend top five are Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace ($12.9m from 916,879 admissions), Mission: Impossible 2 ($12.0m with 861,164 admissions) and A.I. Artificial Intelligence ($11.9m with 1,023,647 admissions).

All of the top five films have been released in the past three years, reflecting the growth of Japan's exhibition sector, as well as the recent trend of local distributors to open major movies on as many screens as possible, scaling back drastically in the subsequent weeks.