“Emergency Room” veteran Noah Wyle is considered a favorite to win Sunday’s Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, with his show “The Pit” being nominated for Best Television Drama.
But a messy legal battle swirling behind the scenes spoils the celebration and threatens to damage the hospital drama’s success.
The widow of “ER” creator and “Jurassic Park” screenwriter Michael Crichton claims “The Pit” is a blatant rip-off of his 90s NBC blockbuster.
Shelley Crichton is suing Wiley and producer Warner Bros. Television, and legal sources tell Page Six that both Wiley and the studio’s billionaire CEO David Zaslav are among those asked to give evidence in affidavits and hand over texts and emails.
Ms. Crichton claims her husband’s estate was locked out of the show after she spent more than a year trying to secure a deal to reboot “ER” into a show similar to “The Pit,” and received emotional emails trying to get Mr. Wiley on board.
Shelley claimed that when no agreement could be reached, producers, including Wiley and original “ER” showrunner John Wells and producer Scott Gemmill, made only a few cosmetic changes to create a “new” show.
They moved the location to Pittsburgh instead of Chicago, where ER was set, and instead of bringing back his famous character, Dr. John Carter, Wiley now plays Dr. Michael “Robbie” Robinavich.
The show debuted in January 2025 and launched its second season earlier this month. Wiley, 54, won an Emmy last September for the show, which won for best drama. He also won the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor last Sunday, and the show also won Best Drama, with Katherine LaNasa winning Best Supporting Actress.
A judge ruled the case can proceed, but a person familiar with the situation said this week: “We think this is actually very dangerous behavior by Shelley Crichton. What she’s doing is… an attack on creative freedom and expression.”
An appeal of Crichton’s lawsuit by the show’s lawyers, seen by Page Six, states: “This lawsuit is without merit. ‘The Pit,’ like other hospital dramas, is not a ‘derivative’ of ER.
“The Pit has different characters, different plots, different themes, different settings, different storytelling devices.
“The only similarities between the two shows are (1) that, like dozens of other shows, they are both medical dramas set in an emergency room, and (2) that one actor, Noah Wyle, plays different characters.”
Perhaps more persuasively, the application adds: “Ms. Crichton sought millions of dollars in connection with the new ER series, far above industry standard fees and more than Warner Bros. (also known as WBTW) could pay for the series in its first year.
“The parties were unable to reach an agreement…When it became clear that a new ER-based series would not go forward, Gemmill created a new show.”
With a total of 15 seasons and well over 300 episodes, NBC’s “ER” shot Wiley to stardom in 1994, when he first played green medical student John Carter and eventually became one of the show’s longest-tenured cast members.
His character is based on Crichton himself, who wrote the script for the pilot in 1974, when he was an intern at medical school. He then reworked that script into the pilot for “ER” in 1993 with John Wells.
Wiley recalls that before he auditioned, he was excited to audition for another actor who practiced tai chi, but Crichton relaxed him by telling him a story about Tibetan potters.
In December 2022, Wiley and the ER producers approached Shelley about rebooting the show, but Shelley claimed that Crichton’s contract had a “freeze-of-rights” clause with Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros., meaning an ER spinoff could not move forward without approval from all three parties.
Sheri told Deadline in November 2024 that the guarantee was “very important” to her, with Warner Bros. saying it would not proceed without her blessing. That’s because the company stripped Crichton of his “producer” credit on the hit show “Westworld” just a few years ago, even though he wrote 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 line during the WGA strike and claimed he supported writers and creators, but when it came to ‘ER,’ he stabbed Michael Crichton in the back and betrayed everything Michael had done for him,” Shelley told Deadline.
“I don’t think they expected me to take legal action, but I had no choice. I’m upholding Michael’s extraordinary legacy…This is what Michael wanted me to do, what he expected from 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 former actress Shelly Alexander, best known for her role on the soap opera As the World Turns.
The two married in Hawaii in 2005, but three years later, Crichton passed away suddenly at the age of 66 while undergoing cancer treatment.
Sherry, 44, was six months pregnant at the time, and Crichton had not yet updated his will to include the unborn child.
After Crichton’s death, she sued to have her son John, now 16, declared the “omitted heir” of his father’s estate, and clashed in court with Taylor, who sought to remove her stepmother as co-executor of Crichton’s estate. Taylor declined to comment for this story.
Ms Shelley also sued for $7 million from her estate for herself, won the case and became chief executive of the production company Crichton Sun, which oversees her late husband’s archives.
Warner Bros. is seeking to have the lawsuit thrown out, but Shelley’s lawyers have attached emails from Wiley and others that they say show the studio is working on “The Pit” behind her back.
One email from Wiley to Shelley in January 2023 was seen by Page Six after reboot talks broke down. It is written as follows:
“While the complexity of your situation was explained to me, I was appalled by the example of disrespect that you, Michael, and the estate have displayed on other properties.”
The following month, he emailed again: “We want John Carter to get back to work because we have a lot of work to do.”
“I humbly ask for your help, and I invite you to open your hearts and join me in my crazy movement to make a difference. I believe we can do it.”
Wells emailed Shelley with his idea, saying, “Michael’s original script (the pilot episode) was about a day in the ER… Thirty years later, it was supposed to be a 14-hour shift for John Carter (Noah Wyle), who is now the ER’s attending physician.”
“The idea was to show the continued collapse of public hospital emergency rooms as chronic homelessness, fentanyl, and the fallout from the pandemic eat away at the public health system.
“We watched Carter arrive for his shift, followed his 14-hour day to see if he could continue on the job, and watched him regain his purpose and return to his profession.
“We encountered some of the characters from the first 15 years of ER. They worked the shift before him at the beginning of the episode, and a few more came into the shift after him at the end.
“That’s what Noah and Scott suggested to me. We couldn’t go any further.”
Page Six also reportedly asked Warner Bros. to relinquish the foundation’s rights to approve additional programming developed from “ER,” which could be developed as a “Law & Order”-style franchise on HBO Max.
Warner Bros. is trying to dismiss the lawsuit, but if that doesn’t work, the matter will go to court. However, there is still a possibility that the case could be resolved out of court.
Shelley is seeking damages, but a person close to the case said the case goes beyond “The Pit” and that “[Crichton’s]estate is fighting for the rights of all creators.”
Sources close to the situation dispute that the estate is simply “greedy.”
Warner Bros. and representatives for Wiley, Shelley and Welles did not respond to requests for comment.
Weil told Variety last year:
“This is a disgrace to tradition and it shouldn’t be done.”
