Will Smith & Jay Z Partner With HBO For Emmett Till Miniseries

Will Smith and Jay Z are known to do entertainment business together however for their next venture, they’re ensuring the story of one of the Civil Rights movement’s most tragic heroes lives on for yet another generation.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the two Hip-Hop heavyweights are teaming up with HBO and Roc Nation CEO and co-founder Jay Brown, James Lassiter, and Aaron Kaplan to executive producing a yet-untitled Emmett Till miniseries.

Production companies Roc Nation, Overbrook, and Kapital Entertainment are the production companies attached to the project.

In 1955, while visiting family in Mississippi, the 14-year-old Till whistled at 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, a local white woman. A few days later, Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam, removed Till from his house and brutally beat him and gouged out one of his eyes before tossing his lifeless body in the Tallahatchie River.

In September of that year, Bryant and Milam were acquitted of Till’s kidnapping and murder, crimes they later expressed no remorse for committing. The case is also famous for Till’s mother holding an open casket funeral so the world could see “what they did to her baby.”