Till will be based on producer Keith A. Beauchamp's 2004 documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till and Simeon Wright's Simeon's Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till. The movie will focus on the murder of the African-American teenager, who was brutally beaten, shot through the head and dumped in the Tallahatchie River with barbed wire tied around his neck after he was accused of flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955.

The movie is scheduled to begin shooting next year (16) and filmmakers have launched a Kickstarter.com fundraising campaign in a bid to raise $50,000 (GBP31,250) to help with production costs.

Goldberg says, "Here is a story that is as much a part of American history as the Boston Tea Party and may stand as the greatest argument for getting rid of sanctioned racism.

"Emmett Till's brutal death at the hands of ignorant, brutish people exposes the Jim Crow-era South that gave the implicit OK to uphold that kind of racism without any real fear of repercussions. Today, the return of rampant, unchallenged racism cries out for the telling of Emmett Till's story again."

Goldberg's film is not the only Till project in development - rapper Jay Z and Will Smith have teamed up to executive produce an untitled mini-series, and late film critic Roger Ebert's widow, Chaz Ebert, is executive producing a film based on the book Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America, which was written by Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, and award-winning journalist Christopher Benson.