Emmett Till HBO Miniseries To Be Produced By Jay Z & Will Smith
An HBO miniseries based on the tragic events surrounding Emmett Till's death is being executive produced by Jay Z and Will Smith.
In a report from Deadline the untitled miniseries is now in development, with writer Steven Caple Jr. serving as the show's writer. Caple will write a script based on the book Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked The World And Propelled The Civil Rights Movement by Devery Anderson.
The series will tell the story of 14-year-old black teen Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered after allegedly flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, with his savage murder galvanizing the emerging civil rights movement.
As Shadow & Act also reported, aside from this untitled project, there are two other feature films based on Emmett Till that are still in the works. One is based on the book Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America, which was co written by Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, and journalist Christopher Benson. The second is based on the play The Face Of Emmett Till.
Both were announced in 2015, with filming for the latter supposed to start earlier this year. However, no recent updates for either have been made.
All three of the feature films are scripted, not documentaries. Depending on which one releases first, this will be a first for movies based on Till, considering most of them so far have been documentaries. There's also the Whoopi Goldberg-backed Till, which we wrote about a year ago when it first popped up. The film, which is based on a memoir by Till's cousin Simeon Wright called Simeon's Story, is scheduled to begin filming some time next year in Mississippi.
In the era of Black Lives Matter these stories are important, and it'll be interesting to see how each film sheds light on one of America's most controversial moments.
