American Pie 2 has bolted out of the starting blocks in France, with more than a quarter of a million admissions on its first day of release, making it the sixth best opening of the year so far.

Debuting on 495 prints, the UIP title pushed last week's chart-topper Bridget Jones's Diaries, which sold 185,000 tickets on its first day and one million tickets in its first week, down to the second slot, with a 40% drop.

The sequel to American Pie is expected to do even better than the first installment, released in December 1999 and which, after a very slow start, clocked a final 2.6 million admissions in France, the equivalent of about $15m.