Chaz Ebert, the wife of late-critic Roger Ebert, and Shatterglass Films have announced at the Cannes Film Festival that they are developing a movie based on the book Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America, which chronicles the story of Emmett Till, a boy from Chicago who was lynched after whistling at a white woman while visiting the Mississippi Delta in 1955; the events then served as a spark for the Civil Rights Movement in America.

The book was co-written by Till’s late-mother and journalist Christopher Benson, the later of whom is producing the movie along with Luke Boyce, Brett Hays, and Jen Shelby. A screenwriter and director haven’t been announced.

Chaz Ebert

It is planned for the movie to shoot in Mississippi and Central Illinois in 2016. Ebert says it will be an all-encompassing telling of the tragic story.

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.

We will have more on the project as it develops.