News > Gong Li and John Cusack Go to Shanghai

Written by David Morgan

John Cusack is in talks to re-team with director Mikael Hafstrom (1408) in the Weinstein Co.'s production of Shanghai. Written by Hossein Amini, Shanghai is a period drama set in summer 1941, in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Variety reports that Cusack will play an American who returns to Shanghai to discover that his friend has been murdered. "While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding." Shanghai-born Mike Medavoy will produce with Barry Mendel. Though it's not stated in the Variety article, it's safe to guess that Chinese beauty Li will play the love interest.

The premise makes it sound like an Asian-set remake of Carol Reed's The Third Man. Hopefully it'll fare better than Steven Soderbergh's similarly-themed The Good German.