A scene from A Chinese Odyssey [Photo provided to China Daily]

Film A Chinese Odyssey, a Stephen Chow classics, will be rereleased in a longer version on the mainland in spring.

The 1995 fantasy film, divided into two parts, influenced a generation of Chinese and established the Hong Kong-based actor as the "king of comedy".

In the new version, the film's second part, Cinderella, inspired by the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, has been re-edited to add 11 minutes to the original 99.

Western Movie Group, which owns the copyright, said vast footage from the film’s shooting in the 1990s, was discovered in a warehouse.

Zhang Yifeng, the group's deputy general manager, said many interesting scenes had been edited out because the trend in China back then was to watch roughly 90-minute films.

The group's digital team took more than three months to repair 150,000 frames and re-edited it in high resolution.