Actor Will Smith and rapper Jay Z are joining forces to produce an HBO miniseries to tell the story of Emmett Till, the African American teen who was killed in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
The executive producers on the project will include Jay Z, Smith, Aaron Kaplan, Jay Brown and James Lassiter. It was Kaplan who came up with the idea of turning Till’s tragic story, which was a key moment in the Civil Rights movement, into a miniseries. According to Variety, there is no writer attached, but the plan is for it to run six hours.
Kapital Entertainment, Smith’s Overbook Entertainment and Jay Z’s Roc Nation will produce the series. Both Smith and Jay Z previously worked together on Sony’s Annie remake last year.
Till was brutally murdered after he allegedly flirted with a white woman named Carolyn Bryant. Her husband and half-brother took Till, then only 14, from his great uncle’s house and killed him.
Chaz Ebert, the widow of film critic Roger Ebert, announced in May that she plans on producing her own film about Till based on Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America, written by Till’s late mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, and Christopher Benson.
PBS also produced an American Masters episode on the Till case called The Murder of Emmett Till.
image courtesy of INFphoto.com