Warner Bros. Television, the studio behind hit NBC medical drama ER and the upcoming Max medical drama The Pitt, has hit back at a lawsuit filed this morning by Sherri Crichton, the widow of ER creator Michael Crichton, on behalf of John Michael Crichton Trust’s Roadrunner JMTC.
“The lawsuit filed by the Crichton Estate is baseless, as The Pitt is a new and original show,” the studio said in a statement. “Any suggestion otherwise is false, and Warner Bros. Television intends to vigorously defend against these meritless claims.”
The suit alleges that, after ending a year-long negotiation with the Crichton Estate for a sequel to ER with former ER executive producer John Wells, the studio went on to launch The Pitt with the same creative auspices, moving the setting from Chicago to Pittsburgh.
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Wells, as well as Amblin TV, were the other key pieces WBTV had to secure in addition to the Crichton Estate to make an ER followup possible. Their deals were never made as the negotiations with the estate broke off in April 2023 after the two sides could not come to an agreement on financial terms.
While those talks were going on, Wells had been in conversations with former ER star Noah Wyle and writer R. Scott Gemmill about the potential reboot. These are the same key auspices who are involved in The Pitt.
“The Pitt is ER. It’s not like ER, it’s not kind of ER, it’s not sort of ER. It is ER complete with the same executive producer, writer, star, production companies, studio and network as the planned ER reboot,” alleges the lawsuit, which names WBTV, Wells, Wyle and Gemmill, among other, accusing them of Breach of Contract, Breach of Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing, and Intentional Interference With Contractual Relations. Amblin TV is aware of The Pitt and is not believed to have claims over any alleged connections to ER.
There had been chatter about Wells and Wyle reteaming to reboot ER, which gained momentum after the pandemic put healthcare workers back in the spotlight.
“That’s kind of the road we had started down,” Wyle said on a podcast earlier this year, noting that mail from first responders and other ER fans prompted him to reach out to Wells about revisiting the beloved series not with a traditional reboot but “something much smaller, and much more contained — more of a character piece catching up to an old character and just finding out how they feel about what’s happening right now in healthcare.”
With the ER negotiations abruptly ending a week or so before the WGA strike, there was no movement for months. Wells and Gemmill, with Wyle on board, pitched The Pitt to the studio in late 2023 or early 2024. Its 15-episode straight-to-series order from Max was announced on March 26.
Per the official logline, The Pitt is a realistic examination of the challenges facing healthcare workers in today’s America as seen through the lens of the frontline heroes working in a modern-day hospital in Pittsburgh. Wyle, known for his ER role as Dr. John. Carter, plays a new character, Michael Robinavich.