“ER” vet Noah Wyle is favorite to scoop Best Actor at the Golden Globes Sunday, while his show, “The Pitt”, is up for best TV drama.
But the celebrations are marred by a nasty legal fight rumbling behind the scenes which threatens to tarnish the hospital drama’s success.
The widow of “ER” creator Michael Crichton — who also wrote “Jurassic Park” — claims “The Pitt” is a blatant rip off of his ’90s NBC mega-hit.
Sherri Crichton has launched lawsuit against Wyle and producers Warner Bros. Television, with legal sources telling Page Six both Wyle and the studio’s multi-millionaire CEO David Zaslav will be among those called to give evidence in depositions and hand over their texts and emails.
Crichton claims her husband’s estate was iced out of the show after spending more than a year trying to make a deal to reboot “ER” as a similar show to “The Pitt”, and even receiving emotional emails from Wyle to get her on board.
When they couldn’t reach an agreement, Sherri alleges Wyle and the producers, including original “ER” show runner John Wells and producer Scott Gemmill, merely made a few cosmetic changes to make a ‘new’ show.
They moved the location to Pittsburgh instead of Chicago, where “ER” was set, and instead of Wyle bringing back his famed character Dr. John Carter, he now plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch.
The show debuted in January 2025 and its second season launched earlier this month. Wyle, 54, won an Emmy last September and the show scored Best Drama. He also won a Critics Choice Award for best actor last Sunday, the show won best drama and Katherine LaNasa scooped best supporting actress.
Although a judge has ruled the case can go ahead, a source familiar with the situation this week told us, “We think this is actually quite a dangerous act by Sherri Crichton. What she’s doing … is an attack on creative freedom and expression.”
An appeal against Crichton’s lawsuit by the legal team defending the show, seen by Page Six, claims: “The lawsuit is baseless: The Pitt is no more a ‘derivative work’ of ER than is any other hospital drama.
“The Pitt involves different characters, a different plot, different themes, a different setting, and a different storytelling device.
“The shows’ only similarities are (1) they are both medical dramas set in emergency departments—like dozens of other shows—and (2) they share a single actor, Defendant Noah Wyle, playing different characters.”
Perhaps more tellingly, the filing added: “Ms. Crichton demanded many millions of dollars in connection with the new ER series — well above industry standard rates, and more than [Warner Bros., aka WBTW] was willing or able to pay for a series in its first year.
“The parties were unable to reach agreement … When it was clear a new ER-based series was not moving forward, Gemmill created a new show.”
Totaling 15 seasons and well over 300 episodes, NBC’s “ER” catapulted Wyle to stardom in 1994, when he first began portraying green med student John Carter, eventually becoming one of the show’s longest-tenured cast members.
His character was based on Crichton himself, who originally wrote a script for a pilot about his time as an intern in medical school in 1974. He then re-worked that script into what became the pilot for “ER” with John Wells in 1993.
Wyle has reminisced how Crichton helped him relax before his audition by telling him a story about a Tibetan potter, after he had been psyched out by another actor auditioning who was doing Tai Chi.
In December 2022, Wyle and “ER” producers pitched a reboot of the show to Sherri, who claims Crichton’s contract has a “frozen rights” clause with Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros. which means no “ER” spinoffs could proceed unless approved by all three of those parties.
Warner Bros said they would not proceed without her blessing and Sherri told Deadline in November 2024 assurance was “very important” to her. That was because only a few years earlier the company had stripped Crichton of his “created by” credit for their hit show “Westworld”, despite the fact he had written the original screenplay and directed the 1973 film.
Crichton also made billions of dollars for Warner Bros., she noted.
“Noah Wyle stood on the picket lines during the WGA [union] strike and said he stood behind writers and creators, but when it came to “ER” he stabbed Michael Crichton in the back and betrayed everything Michael had done for him,” Sherri told Deadline.
“I don’t think they expected me to take legal action, but I was left with no choice. I am protecting Michael’s extraordinary legacy … This is what Michael would have wanted and expected of me,” she continued.
Crichton had four ex-wives and a teenage daughter, Taylor, from his third marriage to Anne-Marie Martin, when he began dating Sherri Alexander, a one-time actress best known for appearing on soap opera “As the World Turns.”
They wed in Hawaii in 2005 but three years later Crichton died unexpectedly at 66 while undergoing cancer treatment.
Sherri, then 44, was six months pregnant and Crichton had not yet updated his will to include their unborn child.
Following his death, she sued to have their son, John, now 16, was declared an “omitted heir” to his father’s estate — clashing in court with Taylor, who wanted her stepmother removed as a co-executor of Crichton’s estate. Taylor declined to comment for this story.
Sherri also filed a claim for $7 million from the estate for herself and won, becoming chief executive of CrichtonSun, a production company which oversees her late husband’s archive.
While Warner Bros. is asking for the case to be scrapped, Sherri’s attorneys have included emails from Wyle and others which they claim shows the studio going behind her back to create “The Pitt.”
One email from Wyle to Sherri in January 2023, after negotiations for the reboot fell through, and seen by Page Six, reads, “I was deeply saddened to hear that the project won’t be going any further.
“The complexities of your situation have been explained to me and I was appalled at the examples of disrespect shown you, Michael, and the Estate on other properties.”
The following month, he again emailed, “I want John Carter to go back to work because there is so much work to be done.
“I’m humbly asking your help and, with an open heart, inviting you to join me in my crazy crusade to try and make a difference. I believe we can.”
Wells emailed Sherri that his idea was, “Michael’s original screenplay (our pilot episode) was a day in the life of the ER … Thirty years later, it was to be a fourteen-hour shift for John Carter (Noah Wyle) now the attending physician in the ER.”
“The idea was to show the continuing collapse of public hospital emergency room care as chronic homelessness, fentanyl, and the aftermath of the pandemic have eroded the public health system.
“We would see Carter arrive for the beginning of his shift, follow him through the fourteen hours of his day, considering whether he can keep doing this work, and watch him regain his purpose and recommit to his profession.
“We’d bump into a few of the characters from the first fifteen years of ER who are working the shift before him at the beginning of the episodes and then a few more coming onto the shift after him at the end.
“That’s what Noah and Scott pitched me. We never got any further.”
Page Six is also told Warner Bros. demanded the estate give up its approval right for any additional shows developed from “ER” — which could be developed into a “Law & Order” style franchise on HBO Max.
Although Warner Bros. are trying to have the case thrown out, if that does not succeed, the matter will go to trial. However, it could yet be settled out of court.
While Sherri seeks damages, a source close to the case said it’s about more than “The Pitt” and that “the estate [of Crichton] is fighting for the rights of all creators.”
Sources close to the situation counter to Page Six the estate is simply being “greedy.”
Warner Bros. and reps for Wyle, Sherri and Wells did not return requests for comment.
Wyle told Variety last year: “The only thing that I can legally speak to … is how I feel emotionally, which is just profoundly sad and disappointed.
“This taints the legacy, and it shouldn’t have.”
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