Filmgoers to receive "official spoilers book" starting on Saturday

The Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale anime film has sold more than 1.6 million tickets to earn more than 2.3 billion yen (about US$20.8 million) at the Japanese box office as of Thursday. Starting on Saturday, theatergoers in Japan will receive an "official spoiler book" titled "Film 'Behind the Scenes' Record Complete Works" containing setting documents and a behind-the-scenes roundtable discussion featuring the film's staff.

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 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 had earned 2 billion yen in Japan as of March 20.

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 will return 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.

Kawahara's light novel series has more than 20 million copies in print.

Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web