‘Till’ NYFF Review: Chinonye Chukwu Handles The Emmett Till Story With Care

Their happily ever after! Pregnant Kaley Cuoco and Tom Pelphrey couldn’t be any more thrilled to expand their family with their first child.

Chinonye Chukwu’s Till got off to a solid start at the specialized box office, grossing over $15k per theater from 16 locations in five markets for an estimated weekend gross of $240.9k, possibly more depending on how Sunday plays out.

EXCLUSIVE: Director Chinonye Chukwu (Clemency), speaking at a Saturday night reception following the European premiere at the BFI London Film Festival of acclaimed film Till, told about how Mamie Till Mobley sought justice after the lynching of her 14-year-old son, Emmett Louis Till, in Mississippi in 1955. She told us that “There were quite a few people who wanted this role,” but Danielle Deadwyler “was meant to play it.”

Specialty film rollouts continues to accelerate with Chinonye Chukwu’s Till, Park Chan-wook’s Decision To Leave and A24’s Stars At Noon joining releases from previous weeks to populate theaters as awards season gathers steam.  

If and when they choose to speak out about it, survivors of sexual assault each find their own ways of describing their harrowing memories of the incident that victimized them. Going into survival mode, however, is perhaps one experience several would agree on.

Intimacy coordinators, new protocols and safeguards and “things that seem very small on the page” have made Hollywood a better place for women in the MeToo era unleashed by the New York Times’ Oct. 5, 2017 investigation of Harvey Weinstein, said Zoe Kazan, who plays journalist Jodi Kantor in Maria Schrader’s She Said.

Maria Schrader’s She Said written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz based on a book by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey of the same name, and starring Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as the two New York Times reporters who uncovered a web of secrets, lies, and abuse revolving around famed Hollywood producer (and now convicted felon), Harvey Weinstein.

Jazmine Sullivan has shared new song "Stand Up." The track features on the soundtrack to Oscar-contender Till and is Sullivan's first single since her 2021 album Heaux Tales, named Best R&B Album at this year's Grammys. Check it out below.

Danielle Deadwyler is stepping out for a special screening of her new movie.

Whoopi Goldberg said when ET's Kevin Frazier asked about her experience as a producer and cast member of the upcoming biopic  «We tried to fund it ourselves, we've tried to do a lot to get this story out there because… this should be the 10th of the stories on this subject [and] about this family. There should be hundreds of stories that tell this: for little kids, for [all ages]. This is the first feature film, ever.

The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till is one of the lesser-known turning points in U.S. history; but the details of his case, along with the pictures of his disfigured body, haunted the nation’s consciousness back in 1955.

Whoopi Goldberg is addressing head-on a criticism about her looks in the Emmett Till biopic. On Monday's episode of, the 66-year-old EGOT winner -- who portrays Emmett's grandmother, Alma Carthan, in  reacted to a review of the film that claimed Goldberg wore a fat suit for her role. «There was a young lady who writes for one of the magazines, and she was distracted by my fat suit, in her review,» she shared.

About twenty minutes into “Till” — the 1955 story of Emmett Till’s brutal murder — a moment encapsulating this conventional, elegantly rendered biopic’s greatest asset arises. An anxious Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler), the mother of 14-year-old Emmett (she affectionately calls her son Bo), plays poker in the living room of her Chicago home with two of her girlfriends.

Chinonye Chukwu was certain of two things setting out to tell the story of a loving and lovely 14-year-old boy lynched in 1955 Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. First, the story had to be told from the perspective of Mamie, the mother of Emmett Till. “We had to follow closely her emotional journey. For without Mamie, the world, we, would not have known who Emmett Till was.”

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Growing up in Texas toward the tail end of the 20th century, I was not taught about Emmett Till. I’ve learned about him since, of course. Till’s name adorns this year’s overdue federal antilynching act, and his tragic fate has inspired plays and films, including 2018’s Oscar-nominated short, “My Nephew Emmett,” and now a powerful new feature from Chinonye Chukwu, who gave Alfre Woodard one of her greatest roles in 2019 Sundance winner “Clemency.” Till’s story — that of a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago who was kidnapped in the middle of the night and lynched while visiting his family in Mississippi — may have been omitted from my Southern schooling for racist reasons, though I suspect it had as much to do with Western culture’s “great man” bias. History, as a field of study, celebrates the achievements of heroic individuals. Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks. Those names were all taught. But Emmett Till was a kid whose murder galvanized the American civil rights movement, and it has taken a different kind of thinking — à la “Say Their Names” campaign or Ryan Coogler’s “Fruitvale Station” — to position victims in the public’s mind.

The stars of Till are stepping out to promote their highly-anticipated new movie.

Gran Torino producer Double Nickel Entertainment is forging a limited TV series about the life of Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law Jo van Gogh-Bonger.