The Weinstein Company has locked in Gong Li and is negotiating with John Cusack to star in Shanghai, a period drama the studio hopes to make in China early next year, reports Variety.
Mikael Hafstrom, who helmed Cusack in the Dimension hit 1408, will direct a script by Hossein Amini.
Cusack is in talks to play an American who returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months before Pearl Harbor and discovers his friend has been killed. While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding.
Phoenix Pictures topper Mike Medavoy and Barry Mendel will produce, with Arnie Messer executive producing. Shooting will take place in Shanghai.
