The film's home video release subtitle 'Evil Goddess Eris' (Jashin Eris) was suggested by the manga's original author, Masami Kurumada, for the 2004 DVD release; the original theatrical and VHS release simply carried the title Saint Seiya.

Following the success of the manga and its TV anime adaptation, Toei Animation greenlit a theatrical feature, with Masami Kurumada personally participating in the production and designing the five new Ghost Saints in just three months, basing their appearances on his own sketches, as documented in an article in Weekly Shōnen Jump.

The Ghost Saint Scutum Jan's constellation name was originally going to be 'Shield' but was changed to the Japanese term for the Scutum constellation, Tateza.

The movie premiered on July 18, 1987, as part of the Toei Manga Matsuri summer festival, screened as a quadruple feature alongside Dragon Ball: Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle, and the film versions of Hikari Sentai Maskman and Choujinki Metalder.

Despite being made for the Toei Manga Matsuri anthology program, the film was given an unusually large budget for full orchestral scoring and visual special effects, with many veteran staff from the TV anime series joining the production.

Director Kōzō Morishita aimed for a straightforward story close to Kurumada's original manga to accommodate viewers new to the series, deliberately focusing on making only one villain stand out while relegating the other Ghost Saints to minor defeated roles, despite their strong designs and famous voice actors.

This film was the first appearance of Seiya using the bow and arrow equipped with the Sagittarius Cloth, a dramatic device (the Sagittarius Cloth appearing when the heroes face certain defeat) that was later reused in subsequent theatrical films and in the manga's Poseidon arc.

The concept of a deceased Saint returning as an enemy, introduced in this film, was later incorporated into the manga's Hades arc, though unlike in the movie, the resurrected Saints in the manga do not fully betray Athena.

It was confirmed with a question mark in the pamphlet for the later film Saint Seiya: The Heaven Chapter ~Overture~ that the five Ghost Saints had been Silver Saints during their lifetimes.

The villain Eris later reappears in the fourth Saint Seiya film, Saint Seiya: Warriors of the Final Holy Battle, where she is involved alongside Abel and Poseidon in the revival of Lucifer.

In 2011, the film was adapted into a stage musical for Japanese audiences, which premiered on May 5, 2011, and was later released on DVD along with its soundtrack that same year.

The 2013 manga Saint Seiya: Saintia Shō depicts a battle against the goddess Eris and shares some terminology and constellation motifs with this 1987 film, functioning as an unofficial remake of its setting despite having no direct narrative connection.