China's predominant film director Zhang Yimou is hoping to reignite the Chinese film market with his new crime drama Under the Light.

The film is scheduled for a 2020 theatrical release in China and will star veteran Chinese actors such as Lei Jiayin and Zhou Dongyu.

Urban crime drama is a new territory for the award-winning director. It's something I've never tried before, it's urban, modern, cool, Zhang said.

The film could be Zhang's largest and most complex storyline of recent years. The first trailer boasts stylish, neon-lit environments and introduces Su Jianming, a police officer played by actor Lei Jiayin, who is attempting to uncover the criminal activity of corrupt businessman Li Zhitian (Yu Hewei). Chilling scenes of corpses hidden between walls and violence suggest this won't be a simple criminal case.

A poster of Zhang Yimou's Under the Light [Image courtesy of Beijing Enlight Media]

This film marks Zhang's second collaboration with Zhou Dongyu, the actress he discovered and pushed to the stardom. A lot of actresses, including Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi, credit their success to Zhang. They are often referred to as Mou's Ladies.

Zhou Dongyu's first collaboration with Zhang was Under the Hawthorn Tree a decade ago. Her latest effort was 2019 blockbuster Better Days which focused on school bullying and made more than 1.5 billion yuan ($212 million) at the box office on the Chinese mainland.

Together with Zhou, there are other young stellar actors such as Lei Jiayin, Sun Yizhou as well as veterans including Zhang Guoli, Yu Hewei and Joan Chen. The cast is seen as a strong alliance by Chinese audiences with many on social media claiming that they would buy a movie ticket just by looking at the list of actors.

The announcement of Under the Light also sends a strong message to theaters and audiences, that the Chinese film market, suffering from a four-month shutdown, will recover. The Chinese film market is the second largest in the world but is still suffering from a huge blow due to the COVID-19 pandemic.