Stuck on The Weinstein Company shelf for nearly two years, Mikael Hafstrom’s WWII drama “Shanghai” will finally be released….in China. The irony is a bit rich considering China blocked filming in the country after the production had spent nearly $3 million constructing sets. The production then moved to London and Bangkok where filming was completed.
The film stars John Cusack, Chow Yun-fat, Gong Li and Ken Watanabe and is “about an American intelligence official who investigates a friend’s death in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.” While there is no official word on why the film, which wrapped in August of 2008, has taken so long to be released, someone close to the production has said editing proved to be difficult as Hafstrom had to work with “visually different footage” (yeah, we don’t know what that means either) from London and Bangkok, and apparently quite a few composers have gone through the turnstiles as well.
The film will hit Chinese theaters in a wide release this June without any edits from Chinese censors. A U.S. release date has still not been scheduled.