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Sword Art Online Franchise Gets New Original Film
posted on by Joanna Cayanan
The Sword Art Online franchise's "Yuna First Live" concert ended its streaming on Wednesday with a teaser for a "brand-new original film." The teaser promises more information in July.
(Wednesday's stream recreated the character Yuna's concert from the 2017 Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale film. Within that film's fictional timeline, the concert also takes place on April 29, 2026.)
"Sword Art Online -Full Dive-," the event that celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Sword Art Online anime franchise and the online launch of the fictional in-story game, had announced in November 2022 that the franchise is launching a "brand-new original film project." Neither the November 2022 announcement nor Wednesday's announcement specified if the new project is animated. Both announcements describe the film in terms normally used for stories not told in the original work.
Reki Kawahara is best known for writing the Sword Art Online novels, which he began in 2001 and serialized from 2002 to 2008 on his website. Kadokawa's Dengeki Bunko label began publishing a newly-edited print version in 2009, ending the original story with the "Alicization" arc as Kawahara had wrote it in his website with the 18th volume in 2016. The novel series returned with an all-new "Moon Cradle" story arc in 2017, and another all-new "Unital Ring" story arc in 2018, and is now in its 28th overall volume.
The novel series has inspired novel and manga spinoffs, a television anime adaptation with several seasons, a previous anime film, and proposed live-action series. Kawahara's Sword Art Online: Progressive spinoff novel series inspired two anime films of its own.
Source: "Yuna First Live" concert stream
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