HONG KONG - China has blocked a Hollywood movie reportedly starring John Cusack and Gong Li from being shot in the country because of concerns about the script, a film official said Wednesday.
Luan Guozhi, director of international cooperation at China's Film Bureau, declined to reveal the government's concerns about the story for "Shanghai," but said the filmmakers could make changes and reapply.
"We suggest they make some changes to the script and resubmit their application," he said in a phone interview.
"Shanghai" is about an American who investigates his friend's death in World War II-era Japanese-occupied Shanghai.
Producer Mike Medavoy confirmed China's decision to block the shoot Tuesday, but didn't give a reason for the denial. Medavoy and production company The Weinstein Co. didn't immediately respond to e-mails seeking comment Wednesday.
Filmmakers have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and director Mikael Hafstrom has been in China since September preparing for the movie, Hollywood trade publication Variety reported on its Asian news Web site. Hafstrom was quoted by Variety as saying he plans to move the shoot to Hong Kong.
Variety has reported the movie stars Cusack, China's Gong and Japan's Ken Watanabe, and that producers are in negotiations with Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-fat.
While China's concerns about the script weren't immediately clear, Japan's World War II-era invasion of China is a sensitive topic.
Chinese are still angry about Japanese atrocities — the worst among them in Nanjing, where historians say Japanese troops killed 150,000 Chinese civilians and raped tens of thousands of women in 1937.
Other filmmakers have had difficulty getting official approval for projects set in the same era.
Oscar winner Ang Lee recently acknowledged he edited dialogue in his spy thriller "Lust, Caution," also set in World War II-era Japanese-occupied Shanghai, so that the main character would appear less of a traitor to the Chinese cause.
"Memoirs of a Geisha," a Hollywood movie starring Gong and another major Chinese star, Zhang Ziyi, as Japanese entertainers, wasn't shown in China amid speculation officials feared the film would spark a major backlash.
Earlier, Medavoy described "Shanghai" as similar in feel to the 1942 Oscar-winning movie "Casablanca," about an expatriate whose ex-lover asks him for help.
"It's a story of a man who comes to Shanghai to find that his really good friend that he's known for a long time has been murdered. It's (about) the intrigue within that story," he said.
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