Before the era of Astro satellite TV, Sutera Theatre and Pearl Screen were two slots for screening films from Hong Kong. Classic films such as Fong Sai Yuk, Project A and God of Cookery would be screened so many times that the scripts could be memorized. Because Hong Kong films have invaluable artistic and cultural value, a total of 100 kung fu films have been selected to be restored using artificial intelligence (AI) through a project funded by the Chinese government.
Among the films selected under the Kung Fu Film Heritage Plan are Fist Fury starring Bruce Lee, Drunken Master starring Jackie Chan and Once Upon a Time in China starring Jet Li. It was not disclosed how the restoration process would be done and which company would do it. Typically, classic Hong Kong films would be restored by scanning the original physical film into a computer before each frame of the film was restored one by one. This is what Shaw Brothers has been doing since the early 2000s.
In addition to restoring 100 classic Chinese and Hong Kong films, the A Better Tomorrow: Cyber Frontier project was also announced to rework the Chow Yuen Fatt and John Woo classic into an animated film. The animated film took 2 years to complete with a team of 30 people using AI.
Using AI to restore the quality of old films that are scratched, have color shifts and may have lost frames has yielded uneven results. For example, several James Cameron films have been upgraded to 4K for Blu-Ray discs recently, which look strange and the colors are out of sync with the original film.