Sword Art Online -Full Dive, the celebration of the anime franchise's tenth anniversary and the online debut of the make-believe in-story game, said on Sunday that the series is beginning a "brand-new original film project." The new project's animation status was not made clear in the announcement. The staff describes the movie using terminology often reserved for telling non-original work stories.

Several television anime adaptations and anime movies were influenced by Reki Kawahara's original Sword Art Online light novel series. In Japan, it also served as inspiration for a number of manga series, video games, and a virtual reality presentation. In August 2018, Skydance Television declared that it had purchased the franchise's worldwide live-action television rights from Kadokawa.