Bayside Shakedown 2 , the follow-up to the 1998 hit thriller, passed the Y10bn ($84m) mark at the box office on its 29th day of release - making it the third fastest film to reach this milestone in the Japanese market, after Spirited Away and Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone.

Released on July 19 on 400 screens, Bayside Shakedown 2 set an all-time opening record for a Japanese film, with a three-day gross of Y1.840 billion ($15.5million) on 1,260,934 admissions.

By August 17, the film had earned Y10,024,002,480 (US$84.2m) on 7,681,053 admissions. By comparison Bayside Shakedown needed seven months to reach the same Y10bn mark in 1998.

The film was also celebrating its fourth week at the top of the Japanese box office rankings, outpacing Pirates Of The Caribbean, Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines, Matrix Reloaded and The Hulk.

Distributor Toho originally expected BS2 to finish its first run with Y15bn ($128m) - though it is now on track to exceed that figure by a wide margin.

This compares with about Y11m ($92m) for Antarctica (1983) and Y30.4m ($260m) for Spirited Away (2001), the highest grossing domestic live-action and animated films, respectively.

Directed by Katsuyuki Motohiro, who also directed Bayside Shakedown, Bayside Shakedown 2 features Yuji Oda as a feisty cop working in a trendy waterfront precinct of Tokyo, who spends as much time battling the police bureaucracy as he does evildoers planning to blow up the landmark Rainbow Bridge. A production consortium headed by Fuji TV provided the film's US$8.4m budget.