Star War's Episode II: Attack of the Clones has racked up $116.3 million dollars in sales in just four days of release.  In addition to its record-setting $30 million Thursday bow, the film earned an estimated $86.2 million in a Friday to Sunday weekend performance that is the third best ever, topped only Spider-Man's mammoth $114 million debut and Harry Potter's stellar $90 million opening.  But the Clones opening numbers can't really be compared to Spidey's or Harry's because the Star Wars film opened on 1500 fewer screens than the webslinger's and 2000 fewer than the boy sorcerer's.  Attack of the Clones has outperformed Phantom Menace at every turn so far and Phantom Menace ended up earning $431 million in the U.S. and $923 million worldwide.

Meanwhile Spider-Man's total for its third weekend of release declined only 36% to an estimated $46 million, which yields an amazing total of $286.5 million in just 17 days of release. Spider-Man is now the highest grossing film in the history of Sony Pictures, far surpassing the $250.1 million total amassed by Men in Black (another comic book-based property) in 1997.  Spider-Man, which was the quickest ever to reach $200 million, will soon be the quickest to $300 million and now looks like a cinch to arrive at the $400 million level.

Will Clones be able to overtake Spider-Man?  By choosing to limit the number of prints and venues for his film, George Lucas has decided to employ a marathon strategy, to try and outlast his opponent and win in the long run.  The problem is that Spider-Man is demonstrating incredible legs of its own.  Spider-Man's near unanimously positive reviews also represent something of an advantage over Clones, which received mixed notices, but Clones has been polling very well which indicates the picture should get good word of mouth, something that is more important than good reviews.