Following their collaboration on the Annie remake last year, Will Smith and Jay-Z are embarking on a far more serious project. The two are set to exec-produce an HBO miniseries on the murder of Emmett Till, an act that shined a spotlight on the brutal treatment of African-Americans and was a key event in taking the civil rights movement to the next level.
Not much is known about the details as there are no writers or directors on board yet, but it's expected to be a six-hour series. Till was a 14-year-old boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi, who was accused of making advances on a 21-year-old married white woman. When her husband found out, he and other men kidnapped Till, beat him savagely, gouged out an eye, and shot him before weighing his body down in the Tallahatchee River. The two men charged were acquitted of the crime, and since they had no fear of double jeopardy, they eventually admitted publicly to murdering Till. At the funeral, Till's mother chose an open casket service so that the brutality of the crime could be seen by all. Don't look at it unless you want to be scarred for life.
Between this, David Oyelowo's Nightingale, and the upcoming Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill drama Confirmation, HBO is leading the pack in telling uniquely African-American stories. The story of Till's murder, has been told plenty of times before, and currently a couple of movies about it are in the works elsewhere, but this is an opportunity to explore his life before the crime.
