The Pitt has been the runaway TV success of 2025 thanks to word of mouth and Emmy-deserving performances from Noah Wyle, Patrick Ball and the rest of the cast. But the show has had a dark shadow cast over it as the showrunners, including Noah, are at the center of a lawsuit from the estate of Michael Crichton, the creator of the hit 1990s drama ER.
Noah and his fellow executive producers, John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill, have stayed silent on the matter until now, with 53-year-old Noah admitting that he has been left feeling “profoundly sad” over the decision.
“The only thing that I can legally speak to is how I feel emotionally, which is just profoundly sad and disappointed,” he told Variety.
“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.
© MAX 2024The basis of the lawsuit began when Noah, John, R. Scott and Warner Bros TV reunited with the Crichton estate to consider rebooting ER.
Launched in 1994, the show was a huge success and was the launchpad for the careers of Noah, George Clooney, and Julianne Margulies.
The updated version considered focusing on Noah’s character, the affluent Dr John Carter, and his work in the ER as he now entered his fifties, almost 20 years on from the series end.
However the reboot became a nonstarter, and the team pivoted to The Pitt, which focuses on Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, a Jewish working-class emergency room doctor and set across one 15-hour shift, with each episode one hour.
“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,” said Noah.
© MAX 2024The estate, and the widow of Michael Sherri Crichton, disagreed, filing in August 2024 for breach of contract, and alleging that The Pitt was an ER revival “just under a different name”.
“The Pitt is ER,” the lawsuit states. “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.”
The Cricthon estate has the “frozen rights” to approve any reboots of the series, and Sherri alleged that when she received a “courtesy call” in 2022 she was told Michael would only be honored in the credits, and would not receive a “created by” credit, or a $5 million guarantee.
© MAX 2024The talks broke down, and the lawsuit claims that “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”.
“The lawsuit filed by the Crichton Estate is baseless, as 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,” WB said at the time of the filing.
© Getty ImagesThe Pitt concluded its first season on April 10 and Max revealed that it has ranked among the “top three most watched Max series in platform history,” and received an “unprecedented 13-week streak of week-over-week growth, with every single episode since its two-part premiere on January 9 outperforming the last”.
The show premise follows Dr Robby in his ER department for the day, on the four-year anniversary of the death of his mentor Dr Adamson, from COVID.
Dr Robby is joined by his senior residents, Dr Langdom (Patrick Ball) and Dr Collins (Tracy Ifeachor), as well as tjeir lead nurse and trainee doctors as they work with patient concerns that range from a harrowing teenage fentanyl overdose, to violently abusive patients and a mass shooting.
The show does not use music, and the editing and lighting all lend themselves closer to a docu-drama setting than drama.
