Will Smith, Jay Z producing miniseries about Emmett Till

It’s a collaboration you probably didn’t see coming: music mogul Jay Z and all-around entertainer Will Smith are joining forces to bring a new mini-series to TV!

The pair, along with Jay Brown, James Lassiter, and Aaron Kaplan are executive producing an untitled miniseries about Emmett Till for HBO. Currently, there aren’t any writers attached to the miniseries yet but it is described as an “immersive and in depth exploration” of the Emmett Till story.

Originally from Chicago, the 14-year-old Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he allegedly wolf-whistled at a 21-year old white woman, Carolyn Bryant, resulting in Bryant’s husband, Roy, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, savagely torturing and shooting Till in the head a few days later.

Emmett’s murderers were eventually acquitted of the crime and due to double jeopardy, the men later admitted to killing the teen boy. His family chose to have an open-casket funeral to show the savage effects on Till.

Jay Z is two years removed from his last studio album but he’s kept busy with a myriad of other ventures including film production. In recent years, the rapper and his company Roc Nation have helped produce numerous projects, from Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 The Great Gatsby musical – Jay Z also executive produced the film’s soundtrack – to 2012’s Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, a documentary about civil rights activist Angela Davis.