US drama The Pitt is similar enough to medical series ER for a lawsuit against its producers to progress, a court in the US has ruled.
The widow of Michael Crichton, who created ER, argues The Pitt is effectively a reboot of the series, which has been made without proper permission or credit.
Sherri Crichton says her husband’s contract included a “frozen rights” provision that prohibited any spin-offs, sequels or reboots of ER being made without his express consent.
A three-judge panel said there are “clear and numerous similarities between The Pitt and ER,” which means the case can go ahead. Warner Bros previously described the lawsuit as “baseless” and sought to have it dismissed.
Listing the similarities between the two shows, the court cited the emergency room setting, the fast pace, use of medical jargon, graphic depictions of injuries, and younger doctors fresh from medical school being trained.
“We find the details here suffice for a prima facie case,” the judges said.
It means the case will now go to a jury trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.
No the judge is being reasonable while you are being OTT. As others have said, there were talks to make a reboot/sequel to ER which fell through and ER was directly adapted from a Michael Crichton script. The key is the same producers went on anyway to make a show that even used a same principle actor because they allegedly didn’t want to pay for the rights.
The judge has only ruled that there is a case to hear on face value. It may well be that once the facts are heard, the producers and Warner Brothers win. It may well be that the producers lose and are felt to have effectively made the same show anyway, and owe the estate money.
It’s important to remember that ER is directly based on a script written by Michael Crichton who was a medical student in an emergency room prior to being a writer. Steven Spielberg took the script and developed it with John Wells and the pilot for ER is pretty much that script, barely changed. It’s not some tenuous connection - it is effectively Michael Crichton’s show as much as the other original producers, no matter how much it changed over 15 seasons.
This is not about making shows based in Emergency Rooms. This purely about whether this show is actually a sequel to ER that has been changed a little to get away from paying one of the original producers estates. If it had not been the exact same producers who were discussing making a sequel to ER, then there likely wouldn’t have been a case.
The Pitt’s executive producers include: John Wells, an executive producer on ER, R Scott Gemmil a writer & producer on ER and Noah Wyle an actor on ER. At face value that is quite the coincidence, especially when they also pitched a reboot of ER.