The release of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man set yet more records following a host of new openings.

In Paris, the June 12 opening saw a massive 10,645 admissions from 27 prints for its first screening.

This beat French film Asterix and Obelix : Mission Cleopatra (8,818 tickets sold from 28 screens earlier this year) and is on a par with Harry Potter.

Switzerland saw the film become the highest grossing opener of all time with $1.4m (Sfr2.2m) at the weekend. Distributed by Buena Vista International, the opening also set a record for highest admissions, its 160,000 from 106 prints beating previous record-holder The World Is Not Enough.

Italy saw the film manage $5.3m (Euros 5.6m) from 500 screens for Columbia TriStar. Although this was more than twice the opening figure of Star Wars: Episode II three weeks ago, which took $2.3m from 379 screens, it couldn't beat the year's biggest opening to date, January's release of The Lord Of The Rings from Medusa ($5.5m from 503).

In Germany the film claimed the title of all-time strongest opener for a June release, however the 1.4m-plus admissions and $8.8m (Euros 9.3m) takings from 894 prints made Columbia's release only the third-best opening of 2002 so far - after Fox's releases of Episode II and animated hit Ice Age.

In Australia the superhero title attracted a mammoth $6m (A$10.5m) worth of ticket sales from 470 screens during its first four days on release starting on June 7.

Spider-Man is also well on its way to becoming one of Hollywood's biggest successes in India. The film grossed $1.6m in its first two weeks from 224 prints in India where it has been released dubbed in Hindi, Tamil and Telegu as well as the original English version. In comparison, recent worldwide hits Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone and The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring grossed $0.8m and $0.6m respectively.

The film now has an international gross of $172.3m and should pass the $200m mark next weekend, which sees it launch in France, Hungary, Turkey and the UK. Its worldwide tally, including the US, now stands at $542.7m.

Additional reporting by Martin Blaney