‘The Pitt’ Is Not A “Derivative Work” Of ‘ER’, Warner Bros. TV Says In Response To Michael Crichton Estate Suit

deadline.com:

UPDATED with statement from Sherri Crichton spokesperson: Warner Bros. Television, the studio behind hit NBC medical drama ER and the upcoming Max medical drama The Pitt, has officially responded to the breach of contract lawsuit filed in August by Sherri Crichton, the widow of ER creator Michael Crichton, on behalf of John Michael Crichton Trust’s Roadrunner JMTC. “The Pitt is a completely different show from ER,” the redacted filing says. “Plaintiff cannot use Mr.

Crichton’s ER contract as a speech-stifling weapon to prevent Defendants from ever making a show about emergency medicine.” The motion to dismiss (you can read it here) was filed Nov.

4 by attorneys for the TV studio as well as the ER alums working on The Pitt named in Crichton’s suit, exec producer John Wells, star/exec producer Noah Wyle and writer/exec producer R.

Scott Gemmill. It pushes back on the estate’s claims that “The Pitt is ER” and that WBTV and the producers proceeded to create a version of the NBC series set at an urban Pittsburgh hospital after negotiations between the two sides for an ER reboot failed, infringing on the estate’s contractual right of approval for any “derivative work.” The studio argues that similarities between the two shows are only generic “and shared by numerous shows in the medical drama genre—like stories about emergency medicine in an urban hospital or interns overwhelmed by their new jobs—and the fact that ER and The Pitt have one actor (Wyle) in common.” (To support the latter claim, the filing notes that ER star George Clooney had previously starred in a medical show titled E/R.