'Spider-Man' crawls up list of all-time hits

It took just 10 days for "Spider-Man" to muscle its way onto the Top 30 list of highest-grossing films.

A $71.4 million haul in its second weekend pushed "Spider-Man" to a total of $223 million, No. 29 on the all-time domestic list. By the end of next weekend, "Spider-Man" should be pushing $300 million and will be on the verge of cracking the Top 10 all-time list.

"It's staggering, really mind-blowing to see a movie get there so quickly," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. "Some films take months to do that. Some [films take] years to do that with reissues."

"Star Wars" creator George Lucas has conceded "Episode II" won't match the record debut of "Spider-Man," which opened on about 1,500 more screens than "Attack of the Clones" will.

But big results expected for "Star Wars" will pad the box office in a year when Hollywood revenues are running 19 percent ahead of the record pace of last year, when the industry took in $8.4 billion. Domestic grosses are already at $3 billion for 2002, three weeks before they hit that point a year ago, Mr. Dergarabedian said.