John Cusack is set to star opposite Chow Yun-Fat and Grey's Anatomy actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the 1940s thriller Shanghai.

Directed by Mikael Hafstrom, the film is set during the Japanese occupation of the city and sees Cusack play US spy Paul Soames, who discovers that his friend has been killed.

Whilst unravelling the mysteries surrounding the death, Cusack's character discovers a secret world of conspiracies and deceit.

Earlier this year, filming encountered problems when Chinese authorities clamped down on the movie and production was moved to Bangkok and London.

Cusack said: "I guess it's a classic fish out of water story on some level, because he's an American trying to figure out the death of his friend, who was also an American agent, who was killed in Shanghai. So he goes there and he has to infiltrate the mob, the Japanese and the Chinese resistance.

"Well, I think that if you have a script that is that good, and you just don't get to do films like this very often, so to do a script that's this good at this budget level which is healthy enough to be a big film and the international cast that you have, it's kind of a no-brainer."

He added: "I'm lucky to get the project not the other way around. Any actor who has two brain cells would die to be in this film."

Cusack shot to fame in the Eighties in cult classics such as Say Anything and The Sure Thing and has starred in a series of hits, including The Grifters, Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity, Being John Malkovich and soon-to-be-released War, Inc.

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