On one side is Peter Parker, a troubled teenager whose spidery alter ego swings from rooftops and snatches babies from burning houses. On the other is Harry Potter, a young wizard battling against the world's forces of darkness.

Last night, the two youths were shaping up for the biggest fight of their lives as the London premiere of the film Spider-Man heralded the clash of the box office titans.

The director, Sam Raimi, and his stars, Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, had every reason to look confident as they arrived in Leicester Square, in the centre of the capital. The film has smashed sales records, shattering Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone's claim to the highest grossing opening weekend in the US.

Spider-Man took £80m, to the wizard's £63m, and carried on to take an astonishing £246m in its first month and is still packing out cinemas across the country.

But while cinemas here have already sold tens of thousands of tickets for the film, which opens on June 14, analysts say that in the UK Harry Potter could prove a more formidable opponent than even SpiderMan's enemy the Green Goblin.

"It's broken every record going in the States and is about to go into the top five highest earning films of all time, overtaking Jurassic Park," said Robert Mitchell, a box office analyst for the magazine Screen International. "It has been the biggest everything - biggest opening day, biggest opening weekend, biggest first month - and I think it'll open really well here. But records-wise it will be harder pushed to emulate that success. I suspect Harry Potter will hold it, and if Spider-Man takes it I suspect the new Harry Potter movie will probably beat it again by the end of the year.

"Spider-Man as a character has more of a following over there and Harry Potter broke so many records and has a stronger fan base in the UK."

Raimi can console himself with the knowledge that he has managed a feat almost as remarkable as those of his hero: turning a comic book into a film as appealing to critics as teenage movie goers.

Its success is pinned not just on special effects and stunts, but on the struggles of the adolescent Parker cum Spider-Man (Maguire) in coming to terms with his new identity. It also boasts the most implausibly sexy scene to hit cinema screens in years; a lingering kiss between heroine Mary Jane (Dunst) and a half-masked and upside-down Spider-Man.

Even Stan Lee, the film's executive producer and also the man who created the superhero for Marvel Comics 40 or so years ago, appears delighted with the results. "The film not only does the comic justice but it's really better than the comic - and I don't say that lightly."

US top opening weekends

1 Spider-Man $114.84m (£80m)

2 Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone $90.29m

3 The Lost World: Jurassic Park $90.16m

4 Star Wars: Attack of the Clones $80.03m

5 Pearl Harbor $75.18m

6 Mission Impossible 2 $70.82m

7 Planet of the Apes $68.53m

8The Mummy Returns $68.14m

9 Rush Hour 2 $67.41m

10 Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring $66.11m

Source: Nielsen EDI/ Screen International