Film producer Chaz Ebert, widow to film critic Roger Ebert, is working with Shatterglass Films to bring the story of Emmett Till to the big screen.
According to Deadline, the film’s script will be adapted from the 2004 Pulitzer-Prize nominated novel Death of Innocence, The Story of The Hate Crime That Changed America, written by Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley, with journalist Christopher Benson.
Emmett Till was 14 in 1955 when he was kidnapped from his bed while visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta, for whistling at a white woman. Till was brutally tortured shot and thrown into the river. Although the men responsible for the crime were charged with murder, they were acquitted by an all white jury.
Till’s mother insisted her son’s body be on display at his funeral with an open casket. Photos of Till’s disfigured face and body ran in every newspaper across the country and helped to galvanize the Civil Rights Movement.
“The full Emmett Till story needs to be told now and told well as a narrative for our times, given all that is happening on American streets today, and Shatterglass Films are the people to tell it,” said Ebert.
Production is set to begin in Mississippi next year.