The estate of bestselling author Michael Crichton has filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Television, actor Noah Wyle and producer John Wells for breach of contract over the reboot of the hit series “ER.”
According to the complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Crichton's estate spent nearly a year unsuccessfully negotiating with Warner Bros. for the right to reboot the celebrated medical drama that aired on NBC.
When the parties failed to reach an agreement, the studio “simply moved the show from Chicago to Pittsburgh, renamed it ‘The Pitt,’ and moved on without any attribution or compensation to Crichton and his heirs,” the suit alleges.
The move is a “callous disregard for Crichton’s creation of ‘ER,’” a “personal betrayal” of a 30-year friendship between the author and John Wells, the showrunner of the original series, and “an effort to rob his heirs of the fruits of one of his greatest creations,” the complaint states.
Wells has been announced as an executive producer on “The Pitt,” and Wyle will star and serve as executive producer.
“The lawsuit filed by the Crichton estate is without merit, as ‘The Pitt’ is a new and original program. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and Warner Bros. Television intends to vigorously defend itself against these baseless claims,” a studio spokesperson said in a statement.
Spokespeople for Wells and Wyle were not immediately available for comment.
Before he died in 2008, Crichton was a prolific best-selling author who wrote 25 novels that sold more than 250 million copies worldwide, 13 of which were made into films, including “Jurassic Park.” His novels, films and television series have collectively grossed more than $10 billion to date, according to the lawsuit.
In 1974, he wrote the script for what would become the two-hour pilot for “ER,” inspired by his own experiences as an intern in an urban hospital emergency room.
Fifteen years later, Crichton and Steven Spielberg developed their script into the groundbreaking series that ran on NBC for 15 seasons from 1994 to 2009, garnering 124 Emmy nominations and winning 23. The show generated “billions of dollars” for Warner Bros., the complaint alleges.
Before signing a deal with Warner Bros., Crichton obtained a number of contractual promises, including a “freezing rights” clause that prohibited the studio from making sequels, remakes, spin-offs or other derivative productions of “ER” without his “express consent,” according to the suit. In addition, the author would receive appropriate credit, while his estate “would receive compensation commensurate with the ultimate success of ‘ER,’ in connection with any future productions.”
After Crichton's death, the lawsuit says Warner Bros. made a series of moves that “betray[ed] Your confidence and decrease[ed] — and finally delete[d] Crichton removed it from his work, including HBO's remake of “Westworld,” based on the 1973 film Crichton wrote and directed. Instead of giving Crichton a “created by” credit, he was given a “based on” credit buried deep in the end credits.
Then in 2020, the suit alleges that Warner Bros. began developing a new version of “ER” to stream on its struggling HBO Max service “without ever shopping the project around to determine its true value” and without informing the author’s widow, Sherri Crichton, the conservator of the estate who controls her late husband’s “ER” assets for the benefit of their children and in violation of the “frozen rights” provision.
After nearly two years of development, the studio informed Sherri Crichton and the estate of the planned reboot, “the pressure[ing] “He forced them to give their consent, without regard to how Crichton would be credited or how his heirs would benefit financially from the project,” according to the complaint.
After difficult discussions, the heirs were willing to approve the project in exchange for a “created by” loan granted to Crichton and a $5 million default bond.
However, according to the suit, the studio and Wells rescinded those terms and demanded that the estate “waive warranty,” and proceeded to work on the reboot without their consent, initially in secret.
In a statement to The Times, a spokesperson for Sherri Crichton called Warner Bros.’ actions a “shameful betrayal.”
“Sixteen years after his death, Warner Bros. is effectively rebooting 'ER' and seeking to increase the more than $3 billion in profits it has already made from its creation, without crediting Crichton and without obtaining consent as they are required to do under Crichton's contract. Changing the name of the show does not change the fact that 'The Pitt,' which has exactly the same premise, structure, themes, pacing, producers and star, is '“ER' from start to finish.”
