South Korea’s Inshorts is helping studios revive and refresh their back-catalogue content with an AI-powered tool that “super-scales” (increases the resolution of) both animated and live-action footage. And its latest achievement on this front has sent a popular 2D-animated feature from 2011 back into South Korean theaters in 4K. 

Based on a novel by Hwang Sun-Mi, Leafie, A Hen into the Wild (pictured) still holds the record for most tickets sold domestically by a Korean animated movie at more than 2.2 million, but its original cut was definitely showing its 13-year-old age. Inshorts up-scaled the film to look like it was produced today, and it also delivered Leafie to South Korean exhibitor Megabox as part of an MOU it has to provide content for the theater chain’s 4K screens. So far, the pic has sold more than 10,000 tickets since re-opening on January 22, according to Jung-Jin Hong, Inshorts’ COO and marketing division director. 

In terms of process, it can take three weeks to deliver up-scaled content—two weeks for Inshorts’ model to analyze the footage and deliver a demo to clients, and another week to upscale the full video, says Hong. The AI software basically fills in additional pixels to increase image quality. And it’s trained exclusively on Inshorts’ proprietary content, so there’s no risk of it borrowing from any other IPs. 

Hong declined to talk specifically about pricing for the service, but says that the cost to upscale a 26-episode series is cheaper than what it costs to produce one episode. He also emphasizes the longevity and market potential of this upgrade. “[Super-scaling] isn’t something you do every few years; this is a solution for the next 20 years,” he says, adding that an upgraded content release can often revitalize an IP’s consumer products program as well. 

The technique can also be used to level-up current projects that producers have chosen to make in a lower resolution because it’s cheaper and faster in production. 

Other projects Inshorts has recently super-scaled up to a 4K standard include Ghost Messenger and the short film Sunshine Girl, which were packaged together to screen at the 2024 Bucheon International Animation Festival. And the company is currently working on modernizing season two of Iconix Entertainment’s preschool series Pororo the Little Penguin, which is gearing up to return to market. 

“When you have an old asset library, or a 15- to 20-year-old brand that’s ready for a comeback, resolution is the one barrier,” says Hong. “You can’t just push a button on your camera and it becomes 4K. Everything needs to be larger and takes longer. This can be a solution to that challenge.”