Will Smith, Jay-Z board HBO Till mini

US premium cablenet HBO is developing a miniseries with actor Will Smith and rapper Jay-Z about the racist murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955.

The story, about the 14-year-old’s brutal death that kickstarted the US civil rights movement, is being exec produced by Jay-Z and Smith, along with Overbrook Entertainment’s James Lassiter, Roc Nation’s Jay Brown and director Aaron Kaplan.

It’s not the first time the story of Till’s murder, and subsequent open-cask funeral, has been explored on TV, with PBS running one-hour doc The Murder of Emmett Till more than a decade ago.