Gong Li is set and John Cusack is in negotiations to star in "Shanghai," a period drama for The Weinstein Company reports Variety.

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.

Mikael Hafstrom ("1408:) will direct a script by Hossein Amini. The project is scheduled to shoot on location early next year in the Chinese metropolis.