The Ghost star plans to produce Till, which 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 in 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.

Goldberg and her fellow producers recently launched a fundraising initiative on Kickstarter.com in a bid to raise $50,000 (£31,250) to help with filming costs.

On Monday (31Aug15), with 18 days to go, the project had raised $35,443 (£22,152) and Norton took to Twitter in a bid to boost donations, while also calling on mutual friend, director Spike Lee, to chip in, too.

Sharing a link to the Kickstarter page, he tweeted, "My pal @WhoopiGoldberg is backing this cool & very worthy project... I'm kicking in. @SpikeLee you with me?"

Lee had yet to respond to the challenge as WENN went to press, while Goldberg has also yet to comment on Norton's support.

It is not known how much Norton is planning to donate to the cause.

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.