Gong Li is to star in a Chinese remake of Mel Gibson's What Women Want, marking her first performance in a local production since her role as the queen in Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower in 2006.

However, cinema-goers will be able to see her on the big screen before then, playing opposite John Cusack and Chow Yun-fat in Shanghai, a film set in the city during the chaotic 1940s, in which she plays a singer in a night club who is the lover of Chow's ganglord.

In What Women Want, Gong will play the creative director of a Beijing-based advertising company, and Andy Lau a chauvinistic single father who also works in the company.