Film screens on over 7,500 screens in 27 countries

The Sword Art Online stage panel at the "Dengeki Bunko Aki no Saiten 2017" (Dengeki Bunko Fall Festival 2017) event in Tokyo announced on Sunday that the Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale anime film has earned 4.3 billion yen (about US$38.2 million) in worldwide sales.

The film has screened on over 7,500 screens in 27 countries worldwide. Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (voice of Kirito) has held 45 stage greeting events for the film worldwide.

The stage panel also revealed that Bandai Namco Entertainment will host a five-year anniversary event for the Sword Art Online series of video games in Tokyo on February 17.

Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale opened in China last month and ranked #3 in its first weekend, earning 40 million yuan (660 million yen or about US$6.11 million) in its first three days. The film is screening in China in 6,000 theaters.

The film opened in Japan on February 18, and sold about 308,376 tickets for 425,762,760 yen (about US$3.76 million) in its opening weekend. The film was 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 film also surpassed US$1.35 million in ticket sales in its in North American theaters when Aniplex of America and Eleven Arts screened the film in the United States on March 9. The film had held a Hollywood premiere on March 1. The film also screened in Canada during the March 17-19 weekend. The film then returned to U.S. theaters with an English dub starting on April 22.

Original light novel author Reki Kawahara wrote the new story for the film. Tomohiko Ito returned from the two TV anime series and the anime special to direct the film at A-1 Pictures. Shingo Adachi also returned from the TV anime to design the characters based on abec's original character designs, and Yuki Kajiura returned to score the music.