Sword Art Online Film Sells Over 1 Million Tickets

Film earns 1.3 billion yen total, including 425 million yen in 3rd weekend

The Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale anime film has earned a cumulative 1,370,738,380 yen (about US$12.03 million) and sold 1,012,331 tickets in Japan as of Monday. In its third weekend, the film earned 425 million yen (about US$3.73 million) to rank #3.

Screenings of the film using the immersive 4DX and MX4D technologies will start on March 10 in 66 theaters nationwide.

Starting on March 4, the movie's audience members received Sword Art Online: Hopeful Chant, a newly written 100-page novella by original author Reki Kawahara, to mark the movie's third week in theaters. The book features cover art by original novel illustrator abec.

The film opened in Japan on February 18, and sold about 308,376 tickets for 425,762,760 yen (about US$3.76 milion) in its opening weekend. The film is the first anime film to rank #1 in both weekend attendance and weekend box office receipt totals since Makoto Shinkai's your name. The film also set the opening-weekend record among films distributed by Aniplex.

The Eiga.com website reported that the final box office tally of the film could eventually surpass 2.5 billion yen (US$22 million).

Source: Anime! Anime! (Kōtarō Nakase)