‘The Pitt’ Star Noah Wyle Says Lawsuit ‘Taints’ ER’s Legacy: ‘This Could Have Been a Partnership’

Noah Wyle, the star of both The Pitt and ER, recently opened up about the lawsuit filed by the estate of ER’s creator, Michael Crichton, which claimed Max’s hit was too similar to the long-running medical drama of the ‘90s.

“The only thing that I can legally speak to is how I feel emotionally, which is just profoundly sad and disappointed,” Wyle, 53, said in an interview with Variety published on Wednesday, April 9. “This taints the legacy, and it shouldn’t have. At one point, this could have been a partnership. And when it wasn’t a partnership, it didn’t need to turn acrimonious. But on the 30th anniversary of ER, I’ve never felt less celebratory of that achievement than I do this year.”

Wyle, along with R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells, who also worked on ER, originally wanted to reboot Crichton’s series, but once they discovered that was a “nonstarter,” they went in another direction.

“We pivoted as far in the opposite direction as we could in order to tell the story we wanted to tell — and not for litigious reasons, but because we didn’t want to retread our own creative work,” Wyle continued. “We really wanted to find something new for ourselves. And in some ways, that’s what was so disheartening about the whole thing. We really felt like we’d done it.”

Crichton’s widow, Sherri Crichton, filed the lawsuit in August 2024 and claimed that Wells, 58, and Wyle only began working on The Pitt after his estate put a stop to their plans to reboot ER.

“The Pitt is ER,” the lawsuit obtained by In Touch stated. “It’s not like ER. It’s not kind of ER. It’s not sort of ER. It is ER with the exact same executive producer, writer, star, production companies, studio and network as the planned ER reboot.”

Crichton’s estate described Wells’ work on The Pitt as a “personal betrayal of a 30-year friendship.”

The legal document continued, “Rather than afford Crichton the ‘created by’ credit he deserved, Defendants would pretend their reboot was not his creation at all, thereby enriching themselves to the tune of millions of dollars — potentially hundreds of millions or several billion dollars in success — and depriving Crichton’s heirs of their rightful share.”

Along with the fact that both The Pitt and ER take place in an emergency room, Crichton’s estate cited several other similarities between the TV shows, including character traits, the pacing of the series and more.

“If Warner Bros. can do this to Michael Crichton, one of the industry’s most successful and prolific creators who made the studio billions over the course of their partnership, no creator is safe,” a spokesperson for Sherri said in a statement, according to Variety. “While litigation is never the preferred course of action, contracts must be enforced, and Michael Crichton’s legacy must be protected.”

Warner Brothers denied the allegations.

“The Pitt is a new and original show. Any suggestion otherwise is false, and Warner Bros. Television intends to vigorously defend against these meritless claims,” the studio said in a statement, according to an article from Entertainment Weekly published in August 2024.