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Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale Film Gets 'Fan Screening' in 4 Southeast Asian Territories on April 22
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Southeast Asian film distributor Odex announced last Thursday and Sunday that it will have a "fan screening" of the Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale anime film in Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore on April 22.
The fan screening will be a one-day screening, with viewers also receiving the movie premiums that some screenings in Japan distributed, including post cards, illustration boards, 35mm filmstrips, and the Sword Art Online: Hopeful Chant novella that was distributed to moviegoers in Japan in the film's third week of screening. Moviegoers will also receive autograph cards and paper bags.
Odex notes that this new fan screening will have certain scenes re-drawn to a higher resolution, and that countries that had the film's Asuna's "bathroom scene" censored in the previous screenings will now have the full scene.
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 2.3 billion yen in Japan as of April 6.
Odex screened the film with a one-day screening in various Southeast Asian territories at the same day as the Japan opening. In some territories, the film screenings continued past the one-day screening schedule due to full theater bookings. These same territories then screened a regular wide opening for the film in late March.
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.
[Via Anime Pilipinas]
