Live-action One Week Friends film drops to #5

The Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale anime film dropped from #1 to #2 in its second weekend. (La La Land opened at #1 in Japan during the February 25-26 weekend, just before the 89th Academy Awards ceremony.) Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale has now earned a cummulative total of over 1 billion yen (about US$8.8 million).

Starting this Saturday, the movie's audience members will receive Sword Art Online: Hopeful Chant, a newly written 100-page novella by original author Reki Kawahara with cover art (pictured right) by original novel illustrator abec, to mark the movie's third week in theaters.

Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale 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). Screenings of the film using the immersive 4DX and MX4D technologies will start on March 10 in 66 theaters nationwide.

The live-action film version of Matcha Hazuki's One Week Friends manga dropped from #3 to #5 in its second weekend.

The film sold 125,000 tickets for 153 million yen (US$1.35 million) in its opening weekend. The film is projected to earn 1 billion yen (US$8.8 million).

The film your name. rose from #8 to #7 in its 27th weekend. The live-action film of Rin Mikimoto's shōjo manga Kyō no Kira-kun opened at #11. Sunao Katabuchi's In This Corner of the World dropped off the top 10 in its 16th weekend. The film had ranked #9 last week, marking 15 consecutive weeks in the box office top 10.

Sources: Anime! Anime! (Yuma), Eiga.com via Yaraon!