Variety reports that rapper and entrepreneur Jay Z is launching a set of projects about Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager whose 2012 death at the hands of a gun-toting “neighborhood watch coordinator” set off a firestorm of controversy and outrage about the lethal consequences of American racism. Jay Z—who recently acquired the rights to the books Suspicion Nation: The Inside Story Of The Trayvon Martin Injustice And Why We Continue To Repeat It, by NBC reporter Lisa Bloom, and Rest In Power: The Enduring Life Of Trayvon Martin, by Martin’s parents—will produce both a six-part docu-series and a narrative film about Martin’s life.
The projects are being developed through the rapper’s first-look contract with The Weinstein Company, which also generated Spike’s Time: The Kalief Browder Story, another docu-series about a young black man whose death came at the hands of a system more interested in punishing and stigmatizing young African-Americans than in keeping them healthy or safe.