Noah Wyle, The Pitt, and Hollywood’s Bloodiest IP Battle

Summary

Summary of Infamous Podcast Episode: "Noah Wyle, The Pitt, and Hollywood’s Bloodiest IP Battle"

Released: December 11, 2025 • Hosts: Vanessa Grigoriadis, Natalie Robehmed, Gabriel Sherman • Guest: Nick Coolish (The New York Times)

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores the explosive and complex legal battle over the hit medical drama The Pit, alleged to be an unofficial sequel to the iconic 1990s medical series ER. The story delves into the tangled web of Hollywood IP, legacy, and personal stakes, featuring intricate drama between Michael Crichton’s estate (particularly his widow Sherri Crichton), star Noah Wyle, and ER’s original creative team. Through extensive reporting and engaging discussion with journalist Nick Coolish (New York Times), the episode unpacks how business, ego, legacy, and law collide in what the hosts call “a Knives Out movie in and of itself.”

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is "The Pit" and Why Is It Controversial?

[03:35]

• The Pit is set in a Pittsburgh ER, following an intense, real-time one-shift drama filled with shocking medical emergencies.
• The show is praised for its realism and psychological depth, especially by viewers in the medical profession.
• Controversy: The estate of Michael Crichton alleges the show is a thinly veiled sequel to ER, raising issues of copyright, ownership, and moral rights in Hollywood.
• Quote:
  • Vanessa: “It draws you in… It’s gross… but the way that it unfolds, it is so masterful.” [03:09]

2. ER’s Origins & Michael Crichton’s Legacy

[07:09]

• ER was based on an autobiographical script Crichton wrote about his own days as a medical intern.
• Steven Spielberg transformed Crichton’s 180-page movie into TV, leading to ER's massive success.
• Crichton’s Influence:
  • Sold hundreds of millions of books, wrote/director of hits like Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, and Westworld (original).
• Crichton’s role in ER became a key legal sticking point; as the true creator, he negotiated strict “frozen rights” in the original contract.
• Quote:
  • Nick: “The script that became ER is probably… the most autobiographical thing he ever wrote.” [07:54]

3. Noah Wyle’s Vision: From Carter to "The Pit"

[12:12]

• After his career peak on ER, Noah Wyle pitched a dark, character-driven ER spinoff to John Wells (ER’s showrunner), referencing “Logan” and “Joker” as inspiration.
• Wyle's email to Wells: “Get a few band members together and write a beautiful new song in an old familiar key.” [14:13]
• The initial project aimed to bring back his character (Dr. John Carter) in a limited Hulu series, aged and changed but still central.

4. The Crichton Estate’s Legal Stand

[16:46]

• Michael Crichton died suddenly; his widow Sherri Alexander Crichton, who was pregnant at the time, became CEO of Crichton Sun (the estate and production company), defending her son's rights.
• Sherri was not consulted early about The Pit project, despite original ER contracts granting Crichton's estate sequel/spinoff approval and profit rights (“frozen rights”).
• The studios attempted to negotiate but failed, leading to a major falling out and, eventually, a lawsuit.

5. Hollywood Business Realities: Streaming vs. Old Money

[21:32]

• Modern TV is less lucrative than old network hits like ER, but studios claim poverty to avoid big payouts.
• Warner Bros. planned to announce an ER sequel during their rebranding as “Max,” foiled when Sherri held out for terms.
• Studios then reimagined the project, shifting it to Pittsburgh, altering names/plot details, and selling it as “The Pit”—while Sherri sued for compensation and credit.
• Quote:
  • Vanessa: “What’s kind of amazing is this gets tangled up with [Warner Bros. CEO] David Zaslav, who wants... big announcements...” [22:30]

6. Legality & Ethics: How Different Is “Different Enough”?

[24:39]

• Question of originality: Does changing setting, character names, and some story beats protect against IP infringement?
• The show’s DNA: Reporters note The Pit’s plotting and style are structurally very similar to ER’s, especially as earlier pitches were nearly identical.
• Nick observes: “Does every hospital show in the world belong to Sherri Crichton?” [24:19]
• Evidence: Press releases had been drafted calling it an “ER sequel” with Noah Wyle reprising his role; only after the legal dispute did it become “The Pit.”
• Vanessa: “I feel like they’re gonna lose this...but they’ve just decided we’ll pay if we lose.” [25:45]

7. Inside the Lawsuit

[27:25]

• Sherri Crichton’s team attempted (unsuccessfully) to block The Pit’s premiere.
• The series premiered, became a hit (Noah Wyle even won an Emmy—his “lightning strikes twice” moment).
• Both sides are entrenched:
  • Sherri sees herself as a legacy defender, not just for money.
  • The creatives feel ownership through years of dedication and creative contributions.

8. Hollywood's Ongoing IP Dilemmas

[31:52, 34:28]

• The fight raises ongoing questions:
  • How different must a story be to avoid being a derivative work?
  • Should legacy creators' estates be able to halt or profit from “spiritual sequels”?
• Reference to other cases (e.g., Superman, Mean Girls) about credit and compensation for source creators.
• Nick: “I don’t actually like a story where it’s obviously one thing… Usually [the truth] lies in the middle.” [36:01]
• The “normal person eyeball test” makes the shows look awfully similar, even if legally they’re distinct.

9. Emotional and Philosophical Stakes

• Sherri Crichton is portrayed as deeply protective of her late husband’s legacy, while the ER team feels stymied after their own huge creative investments.
• Natalie: “You do hear stories like this all the time in Hollywood… It’s just a matter of whether you actually have the means or energy to pursue it.” [39:14]

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the show’s realism:
  • Vanessa: “I asked [an ER doctor]… what do you think of The Pit? She said, ‘It really shows what it’s like to work there—except I wouldn’t give my interns this much autonomy.’” [04:36]
• On creator compensation:
  • Vanessa (about Crichton’s $800k-per-episode backend): “What’s his per-word rate?”
  • Nick: “A million dollars a word.” [11:23]
• On Sherri Crichton’s resolve:
  • Nick: “She is not this woman who received a billion dollars and just sits poolside… This is a woman who has had to… be sharp, be aware, and not let herself or her son get… [lost in the shuffle].” [18:03]
• On IP battles in Hollywood:
  • Nick: “Does every hospital show in the world belong to Sherri Crichton?” [24:39]
• On the nature of remakes:
  • Vanessa: “There’s gotta be a sequel, a prequel… When something works in Hollywood, this is the best way to get heard.” [34:50]
• On creative choices:
  • Nick (quoting Scott Gemmel): “When I was creating The Pit, I intentionally made it different than ER… about critical issues plaguing our medical system, particularly after COVID.” [37:25]
• On emotional motivations:
  • Nick: “This woman is still in love with her husband and thinks his name should ring out through the centuries.” [31:52]
• Final reflection:
  • Natalie: "There’s no such thing as an original idea, and how different does a thing have to be to be a new thing? It’s really, really tricky stuff. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see." [39:14]

---

Key Timestamps

• 01:10 — Episode opens; framing the new medical drama and battle around it.
• 03:35 — In-depth explanation of The Pit’s plot, style, and appeal.
• 07:09 — Exploration of ER’s origin, Michael Crichton’s life, and contractual groundwork.
• 12:12 — Noah Wyle’s pitch for an ER spinoff; the first seeds of The Pit.
• 16:46 — Crichton’s death; Sherri Alexander’s legalistic stance for her son.
• 20:18 — Warner Bros. studio politics; failed negotiations for an official sequel.
• 24:39 — The legal “frozen rights” and differences between The Pit and ER.
• 25:45/26:49 — Reflection on the similarity between the two shows and likely legal outcomes.
• 31:52 — The emotional motives behind Sherri Crichton's persistence.
• 34:28 — Larger issues of copyright/IP in Hollywood, referencing other industry cases.
• 36:01/36:34 — Sympathetic presentations of arguments for both sides of the dispute.
• 39:14 — Philosophical summing up: What is “different enough” in storytelling? What does Hollywood owe to originators?

---

Conclusion

The episode vividly lays out more than just a courtroom drama—it’s a story of creative pride, the evolution of authorship in Hollywood, and how the law often lags behind the industry’s hunger for legacy hits. Both the emotional and economic stakes are as high as in any TV medical cliffhanger, leaving listeners eager to see how this real-world drama unfolds alongside the show’s next season.

---

Transcript

[Ad Host]

If you could stop somebody from breaking into your home before they got inside, why wouldn't you? Most old school security systems go off only after someone's inside, and that's too late. But SimpliSafe is different. It's proactive with a double layer of defense that stops crimes before they start. First, AI powered cameras spot potential threats outside. Then live agents step in. They talk to the person through the camera and let them know that they're on video. Named best home security system by U.S. news and World Report for five years running, SimpliSafe has no long term contracts or hidden fees, so you can cancel anytime. If I needed a security system, SimpliSafe is the one that I would use this month. Only take 50% off any new system. This is one of the best prices you will ever see for SimpliSafe. Don't miss it. Go to SimpliSafe.com infamouspodcast Again, that's SimpliSafe.com infamous podcast and lock in your discount. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

Campsite Media.

[Natalie Robomed]

From Sony Music Entertainment and Campsite Media, this is Infamous. I'm Natalie Robomed. So today we're talking about the Pit, a medical drama that was a huge hit that many of you may have watched. And the allegations that this show is actually a sequel to to ER, another medical drama that was big in the 90s a little while ago. Now the estate behind ER is suing the Pits creators and star. And while this may sound like a boring intellectual property drama, there is so much more to it than that. I mean, for one, hits are way harder to come by in Hollywood. And this is a hit, so everyone wants a part in its success. And it's a big family drama. I mean, there's an ambitious widow, a disputed estate, allegations of copying, and millions of dollars at stake. This could be made into a knives out movie in and of itself. So today we're talking to Nick Coolish, a New York Times correspondent who has covered the debate about the Pit endlessly. All right, I'm going to throw it over to Vanessa.

[Vanessa]

Hey, Nick, how are you doing?

[Nick Coolish]

Great. Good to be here, Vanessa, how are you?

[Vanessa]

I'm very well. Thank you so much for coming. So the Pit, you broke an enormous amount of news on this. The Pit, of course, ran, I believe, last year on hbo or this year on hbo.

[Nick Coolish]

I think it's this year. Hasn't it been a long year?

[Vanessa]

Yes, it's been a long year. I mean, it's an incredible TV show, I have to say. As somebody who doesn't watch a ton of tv, but did you know, love George Clooney and Noah Wiley on er back when I was a wee lass and my mom would watch that.

[Nick Coolish]

Mr. Wilson, your hand is still attached. Not by much, but it's gonna be okay. Give me an EKG and X ray of his chest, wrist, and hand. Mr. Wilson, can you feel anything in your hand?

[Patient]

No.

[Nick Coolish]

We're gonna save your hand. Don't worry about a thing.

[Vanessa]

I started watching this and I think over the course of the week, I watched the full, like 14 or 15 hours. Totally. It's just. It draws you in. It's gross. You see a lot of people's bodies being opened with scalpels like you kind. But the way that it unfolds, it is so masterful. It's coming back for a second season in January, so. Humongous hit. Tell us what it's about.

[Nick Coolish]

Well, the Pit is a show about an emergency room in the city of Pittsburgh, hence the Pit. And it follows about 14 hours, I would say. It's one shift at the ER.

[Ad Host]

Pupils, 4 millimeters and reactants.

[Nick Coolish]

Okay, that's encouraging.

[Vanessa]

What do you want for meds? 120 ketamine, 80 of rock, afib on a monitor.

[Natalie Robomed]

Morrison's clear.

[Nick Coolish]

That's a lot more blood than expected. Like one long shift that kind of starts out as a normal day, and then slowly more and more things happen. It becomes more exciting and.

Fatal and definitely very fatal.

[Vanessa]

Yes. Many people die.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah. And so it feels very exciting because of this real time thing. You kind of bounce from one room where somebody's, you know, fallen into a swimming pool and drowned. And the next room, there's a gunshot wound victim, and then beside them is a child who's accidentally ingested drugs. And so it's like. And you keep checking in on them. And so there's this inherent tension that doesn't wrap up at the end of each episode like in a traditional drama.

[Vanessa]

Right. It's cool. The fact that it draws you in to not only the stories of the patients, which are obviously, you know, this is drama. Right. It's a gunshot wound. It's, you know, dying of a cancer that you didn't know you had. I mean, this is the stuff of Chekhov, but also draws you into the doctors and their own psychological torment for working there. I mean, interestingly, I have a friend who is now an ER doctor and also has a lot of add. And now I sort of watching this, I'm like, oh, I get it. This is a job for People with add. Cause there's always something different happening. And you just have to be self propelled by a motor, you know, to be successful. Like, be smart in the moment, but you don't need to focus over time. But I asked her, what do you think of the Pit? And she said, it is the show that really shows what it's like to work there. Other than the fact that I wouldn't give my interns this much autonomy to do surgery on people, it really shows it.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah, the interns sort of go from dropping the scalpel in episode one to performing complicated heart surgery. So that's one thing that's less realistic.

[Vanessa]

Which is just six hours because each episode is an hour in the show. So I had no idea before I read your story, which you wrote in the New York Times about the story behind the story, which is, you know, Noah Wylie, who is mostly known for playing John Carter, who was the character on er, who was. Who was the intern. Right. He was the guy who had just started this day, and they're like, you need to go put some sutures in this woman. And he's like, whoa, what is that about?

[Nick Coolish]

Thank you, doctor.

[Vanessa]

You're very welcome.

[Natalie Robomed]

When do I come to have my stitches out?

[Nick Coolish]

Oh, three weeks. When my son had stitches in his foot, they said 10 days. Really? Well, 10 days, three weeks, anytime in there.

[Vanessa]

Okay. He stays for every season of ER, which is like 11 seasons. He becomes a really important part of the show. He's obviously totally dedicated to it, but this is a long time ago. This is like the 90s. And he comes up with an idea to do a spinoff of er, which is what becomes a pit. Of course, I also didn't know that ER was written by Michael Crichton, who's a huge best selling author. So tell us about all of that and how Noah Wylie and Michael Crichton start having this drama that we're gonna discuss in this episode.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah, I mean, we all know about these doctors and lawyers who write these bestselling books. The way that Scott Turow and John Grisham were lawyers and Michael Crichton was a doctor, and they kind of used their expertise to write these thrillers that have more knowledge, more science, more technical detail than you might expect from the average writer just trying to hack it out.

[Vanessa]

Yeah, and he wrote. I mean, Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park. He wrote the Andromeda Strain. I mean, really a lot of stuff that got turned into movies.

[Nick Coolish]

Huge, mega. I mean, sold so many books. I mean, you know, Rising Sun. He also wrote and directed movies. He wrote and directed Westworld, the original.

[Vanessa]

So crazy. Yeah, yeah.

[Nick Coolish]

And so, I mean, but the script that became er, the script that became the ER pilot is, I mean, probably like the closest, the most autobiographical thing that he ever wrote. It was like a roughly two hour story of like a day in the life in a hospital. And there's a character that's based on him which much later becomes the Noah Wylie character. So the Noah Wylie character, in many ways is Michael Crichton. At the start, he doesn't go off and write bestsellers, he stays at the hospital and keeps working. So it's kind of like multiverses. They branch off from each other.

[Vanessa]

Right, right.

[Natalie Robomed]

Have you read that original pilot?

[Nick Coolish]

I've read a lot of it, yeah. I have a copy of it. And it's very similar to the pilot itself, which is streaming, which I went back and watched. And it really plays like a movie.

[Vanessa]

But basically what happens is Michael crichton writes this 180 page movie that's based on him being an intern. And then they decide to make a TV show out of it.

[Nick Coolish]

This little known guy in Hollywood named Steven Spielberg.

[Vanessa]

Right, okay.

[Nick Coolish]

Who apparently is okay at this stuff, says, hey, you know what? This isn't a movie. This is the beginning of a TV show that will be. That will reintroduce the world to the hospital genre. And so Steven Spielberg's production company, along with him and some other folks get together and make this.

[Natalie Robomed]

And we should say this was the show that made a star out of George Clooney. I think some of our younger listeners might not remember er. I remember I'm a little young for it. Not to brag, but I do remember watching this with my mom. And it takes place at this hospital in Chicago. But George Clooney is the hot doctor in it. He's the McDreamy of his time.

[Vanessa]

He is so dreamy. And it really is true. I mean, I forgot also that the pilot opens up with. He's like drunk and he's just like, give me an iv, you know, so I can pop back up and then party tomorrow night, you know. But Crichton himself is sort of dreamy also. I mean, he's like six, nine. He's this charismatic guy. He's, you know, the hottest writer in Hollywood and in books. I mean, his books have sold 250 million copies, which, I mean, he must be one of. You know, it's like him and J.K. rowling. Like that is crazy. So, I mean, originally, er really is his baby, like, it's Crichton and then there's a showrunner, John Wells, and they're running this thing that's going for many years. And Noah Wylie is just an actor on it, really. He's a very important actor.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah, I mean, I think the people, you know, this, I think, comes up a little later in it too. I think the people who worked on ER for more than a decade actually sort of felt like Michael Crichton wrote this one script and then walked off into the sunset and started and collected paychecks over and over and over and over again.

[Vanessa]

Well, I mean, Patrik's like, I wanna be clear that you have in your piece that Michael Crichton made $800,000 per episode in fees.

[Nick Coolish]

Just in back end.

[Vanessa]

Just in back end. So it's like what, 20 episodes for 11 seasons or something like that.

[Nick Coolish]

The number's in there is. It's a quarter of a billion dol. What is it? No, no, seriously.

[Vanessa]

I mean, and if he got that for just writing one script, that first original 180 page script, what's his per word rate?

[Nick Coolish]

VANESSA, FORMER MAGAZINE WRITER It's a million dollars a word.

[Vanessa]

So. Good.

[Nick Coolish]

And again, that's only the back. That's the back end. He got something up front. But so that's the thing. I think there is a residual resentment that you see later in the court case a little bit where they're like, you know, you got paid pretty fairly for that one script that you did would be, I think, the view of the side of the people who made the Pit. Whereas, sort of like this started as his story. Like, this is his character, this isn't just like Jurassic Park. Like, he's not a Tyrannosaurus rex, he's not a paleontologist. Like, this was his, you know, was sort of his life.

[Vanessa]

It's his memoir in a way. Yeah.

[Nick Coolish]

And people feel more personally about that.

[Vanessa]

Right. But as you say, like John Wells, the showrunner who worked on 11 seasons of ER, he basically hooks up with Noah Wiley, who is just an actor.

[Nick Coolish]

Just an actor on the show. Absolute.

[Vanessa]

Noah Wylie has an idea. So what's Noah Wiley's idea that he comes up with, what, like maybe five years ago, and he talks to John Wells about it.

[Nick Coolish]

So a lot changes between the time that ER first comes out and now. And the big thing that's changed is the letters ip, Right?

[Vanessa]

Intellectual property.

[Nick Coolish]

Intellectual property. We didn't used to talk about IP the way we did now, casually, with our mothers and grandmothers around the dinner table at Thanksgiving, you know, like, it was just like people, it was like, oh, I wrote this book or I wrote this movie or I made this movie. It wasn't like who has the ip? But so everything's supposed to be a reboot of something or a new version of something else.

[Vanessa]

Like everything from Westworld, including Westworld now of course went on HBO like 10 years ago or something.

[Nick Coolish]

Michael Crichton wrote Twister with his ex wife and Twisters, you know, making money. Yeah, he's everywhere. He's absolutely everywhere.

And so for Noah Wylie, I think that he certainly wasn't at the peak of his career in February 2020. And no one would argue that his biggest character ever wasn't Dr. John Carter. And so I think he had an instinct that a lot of actors would have, which is, hey, you know what would be great is another version of my biggest show ever starring me as my biggest character ever.

[Vanessa]

And it's a character study. It's like Joker, right?

[Nick Coolish]

Yes. He goes, he writes to John Wells, who had been the showrunner in er. He said he proposes a character study in the vein of Logan leading Wolverine, Picard, like from Star Trek and Joker. And he talks about how it's going to be a 12 episode Hulu limited series where we take another look at the guy who showed us the world the first time. Darker and grittier, aged, but still him. So it's like he has his vision and then I love that he is, let's quote, get a few band members together and write a beautiful new song in an old familiar key.

[Vanessa]

It's so slick. It's just too much.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah.

[Natalie Robomed]

Such an actor.

[Nick Coolish]

You could tell. This is the kind of email where you could totally tell. It was like meant to sound casual and labored over for weeks, right?

[Vanessa]

Definitely.

[Ad Host]

Around the holiday season. I have so much to do. I do not want to be on the phone, on hold dealing with some issue at the bank. Chime isn't just another banking app. They unlock smarter banking for everyday people with products like MyPay, which gives you access to up to 500 of your paycheck anytime. It's also rated five stars by USA Today for customer service. So you can talk to real humans 24 7. If I could talk to my younger self, I would tell her to get the new Chime card. It's a great and safe way to build credit history with your own money and get rewarded just like with a credit card. Join the millions who are already banking fee free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.cominfamous that's chime.cominfamous Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services the secure Chime Visa credit card and my K line of credit provided by the Bay Corbank NA or Stri Bank NA. MyPay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See chime.com feesinfo advertise annual percentage yield with Chime+ status only. Otherwise 1% APY + no minimum balance required. Chime Card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms.

[Patient]

This time of year can be tough. The holidays are near and they're supposed to feel joyful, but for so many, they bring stress around. Food, weight and body image. Add in all the talk about weight loss medications and it can feel overwhelming to know what's best for you. That's why hers is here to support your journey so you can feel your best. Weight loss by hers is realistic, not restrictive. Hers provides access to affordable weight loss plans built around oral medication kits and GLP1 injectable options with oral medication kits starting at just $69 per month with a 10 month plan when paid up front in full. Whether you want to lose weight, grow thicker, fuller hair or find relief for anxiety, hers has you covered. Visit fourhers.cominfamous to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you that's F O R H E-R-S.cominfamous forhers.cominfamous weight loss by hers is not available everywhere. Compounded drug products are not approved or evaluated for safety, effectiveness or quality by the fda. Prescription required. See website for full details, Important safety information and restrictions. Actual price depends on product and plan purchased.

[Vanessa]

So he basically gets together the band, but he leaves out one important person who is Michael Crichton, who at this point is indeed no longer with us. He is dead, but he has been married five times and his last wife, Shari Alexander, who was on as the World Turns, she was married to him only for a couple of years. He died very suddenly and she actually was pregnant with his baby and the baby was not in his will. So that was like a thing that had to be resolved. She's got a prenup 1 million for nine years. If they break up, she's getting some amount of that, but she no, even.

[Nick Coolish]

If they stay together, that's like her whole thing.

[Vanessa]

What do you mean?

[Nick Coolish]

Well, so Michael Crichton's previous wife was the one that he Wrote Twister with, okay. And when they got divorced, it was one of those big divorces where people were like, oh, my God, he's paying her tens of millions of dollars. So I think that he was, you know, he and his lawyers were, like, very clear about this. Clear and careful. Yeah. So it was even say, this was just like, you'll get this. Which is a perfectly great amount of money that people can live on for the rest of their lives. But, like, it's not gonna be what happened last time.

[Vanessa]

Okay. So basically, he dies, and that is all she is able to get. Like, that's it? Yeah.

[Nick Coolish]

I mean, the way that I look at it is that she was kind of forced from the very beginning to defend her rights and her son's rights financially because she is pregnant. And the way his will is written, it really jumps out at me. But I'm told by lawyers that it's actually kind of standard. It's like, only the people in this will know other people.

So that if the illegitimate child in North Dakota comes out of the woodwork, they can't lay a claim to it. But so basically, she is pregnant. They have not added the child to his will because they really are not expecting him to die. I mean, he has cancer. But as it was explained to me, it was not something where they were expecting anything to kind of happen so quickly. And so she immediately, like, has to sue her own husband's estate to have her son added.

[Vanessa]

Right, right.

[Nick Coolish]

Which she does successfully, so her son becomes an heir. She's not this woman who's received a billion dollars and just, you know, sits poolside, you know, eating melon balls. This is a woman who has had to, like, keep an eye out, you know, be sharp, be aware, be ready, and not let herself or her son get, you know.

[Vanessa]

Right. She's married, she's pregnant. She's obviously not excited that her husband has suddenly died and she has to sue. This is a tragedy for her. And in all of this posthumous, you know, situation, she becomes the CEO of Kryden Son, which is a TV production company, and also his archive. Right. So she's now entrusted with, how do I uphold my responsibility to my husband and make sure that he gets his due. She becomes very upset when she learns that there is going to be an ER spinoff with Noah Wiley, the original showrunner, and have nothing to do with Crichton, because they literally just on Thanksgiving eve call her to say, like, yo, there's gonna be a story in Deadline, which is a trade publication for Hollywood, announcing that we're gonna do this. Just wanted to give you a heads up.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah, totally.

[Vanessa]

Right. And she pulls out, you know, the old contracts, the ER contracts, and goes, well, wait a second, because I'm completely protected here, he has to be consulted for any sequel. And even beyond that, I think he gets a piece of it. Right?

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah. Michael Crichton had something in the ER contract that's called a frozen rights provision. And it really specifically says you can't do a sequel or spinoff without Michael Crichton. Say so. Without Steven Spielberg, say so. Like, the people who created ER are the creators. Are the creators, and they can veto the spinoffs. I mean, you gotta realize this is like a document from 1993.

[Vanessa]

Right.

[Nick Coolish]

I'm not even sure that the people who were putting this show together had looked at the document from 1993 and knew that they had this. Right. Although the right is, you know, now the subject of fierce litigation. Right. But. So, yeah, she says, hold on, hold on. You can't make this without the Crichton estate, AKA me, Sherry Crichton. And so they start negotiating and they do not come to a deal.

[Vanessa]

Right? They start negotiating. And really, there's almost no price. Right. That she's willing to. It seems to me from your story, like, there's almost no price that she's willing to settle for.

[Nick Coolish]

You know, I'm not sure that's true. I mean, there's so many issues in this story, which is part of what makes it interesting. And like, one of them is, are the big television studios making less money from streaming than they did from broadcast?

[Vanessa]

Okay.

[Nick Coolish]

Because the studios always want to say, oh, I'm such an impoverished Warner Brothers Television, I couldn't possibly pay the writers or the actors or the directors, you know, and they're like. And I think that the truth lies somewhere in between. Like, you're not having multi billion dollar juggernauts like er, which I have watched in. I think I've watched episodes of ER in like, Egypt and Romania, you know, on little televisions and hotels. I mean, the global phenomenon, like you're not. But on the other hand, I don't think anybody quite believes that the studios are as poor, you know, as they say they are. But so the studio would say, Sheri is expecting ER money for a limited HBO Max series. And Sherry would say, they have the money, they just don't want to pay me.

[Vanessa]

Right, right, right. And what's kind of amazing is that it seems like this gets tangled up with David Zaslav, who's the head of Warner Brothers. And he wants to make a big announcement about all these new great shows he has coming out. And because Sherry is sort of dithering, he doesn't get to make his big announcement. And then he's sort of just like, okay, we're done. We're done. There's no ER spinoff. You guys are over.

[Nick Coolish]

Right. So they were gonna do the big, splashy rebrand Max. And they wanted to be like, Max at the end, like, at Steve Jobs iPhone announcement. They were gonna do just one more thing, and they were gonna start with the dun dun, like, the VR sound.

[Vanessa]

And then they have the face of Clooney, who's gonna, of course, appear, like, in a little cameo. Yeah.

[Nick Coolish]

And so this is the idea. And I have actually talked to reporters who covered this, the Max announcement, and who said, yeah, this answers a question in my mind, because it seemed very anticlimactic. Like, the reporters covering it were also expecting a big, splashy announcement.

[Vanessa]

Yeah.

[Nick Coolish]

So, yeah. So not coming to terms for that definitely did not put Sherry Crichton in the good graces of Warner Brothers.

[Vanessa]

Right. But then they just go ahead and make it anyway and call it the Pit. I mean, that is essentially what happened. They say, this is no longer an ER spinoff. We've changed Noah Wiley's name. He's not Josh Carter, John whatever from the original. He's now got a different name. We're going to Pittsburgh. We're, you know, changing up a bunch of different things, and we're gonna really focus on how this is about what happened in ERs after Covid and put in this plotline of, you know, that his mentor had died during COVID and he's so traumatized by it, and that's that. And we've sold it to hbo.

[Nick Coolish]

I mean, the way that I always look at it is that this show called the Pit comes out and Sherri Crichton sues and says, you owe me money because my husband wrote the pilot for er. And then everyone goes, ugh. Does every hospital show in the world belong to Sherri Creit?

[Vanessa]

Right?

[Nick Coolish]

Like, who does she think she is? Why does she. This is this. Excuse me. This show's not called er. It's called the Pit. You know, the character's named Rabinovitch. It's totally different. And that. I mean, and that. I think that that was my reaction, honestly. Like, the first time I saw something about the lawsuit, I was like, ugh, come on. Like, this is ridiculous. And then you go into the court file and you see that the show that they pitched Sherri Creighton as the ER spinoff is real time every hour.

[Natalie Robomed]

No, I mean, when they were trying to get Sherry on board with this proposed sequel that she found out about after the fact, John Wells, who was the ER showrunner, who was also going to be attached to the Pit, sent Sherry Crichton a nice email where he basically said, okay, this is what it's going to be. It's going to be a 12 hour shift an hour, an episode that spills over into a 14 hour pilot. And 30 years later, you know, it's going to be a 14 hour shift for John Carter. Noah Wiley, now the attending physician in the er, which does sound awfully familiar.

[Vanessa]

Yeah, I would just push back on Nick. I think they're actually pretty. When I watched er, I was like, this is. I agree with you. It's way slower, you know, I mean, the Pit is so fast that you're almost getting whiplash. Like, you're just like, I can't. But when you think about the, like, dramaturgical components, they're pretty similar, right? Like the doctors, they're running around, the plot of the show gets revealed through, you know, these scenes and these sort of interstitial moments that doctors are having with each other after, like, we gotta save this person. I mean, the amount of gore that's shown, I think, in both cases is sort of surprising. Right. And so, I don't know, I feel like they're gonna lose this. I feel like they're gonna lose this. And yet they're coming out with a second season. So it's obviously lucrative enough and high profile enough that they've just decided like, we're gonna pay if we lose.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah, they bang those episodes out. It's like, it's pretty quick. This is like a model of like a profitable kind of show. If you can go back to making hospital shows and police procedurals where you just shoot on the streets of New York.

[Vanessa]

Sure, yeah.

[Nick Coolish]

That, that's like really, that's really good for them. You know, I mean, I think both sides go into litigation thinking they're gonna win. Probably it comes out with some kind of settlement.

[Vanessa]

I mean, I guess what I would say is that if this litigation was happening to a show that was on the bubble where they were like, you know, maybe we're gonna renew it, maybe we're not gonna renew it for a second season. They would be like, no way, we are not renewing that.

[Nick Coolish]

Right. Well, to go back a step, Sherri Creighton and her lawyers tried to stop The Pit.

[Vanessa]

Oh, they did.

[Nick Coolish]

From airing.

[Vanessa]

Stop it, people.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah, yeah, they tried to stop it. They did not win on that. So the show came out and it was really the show of Noah Wiley's dream. So Noah Wiley wrote that email. You know, he never. Well, he probably imagined, but he probably dared not speak out loud. Like, he won the Emmy Award that he was nominated for multiple times on ER and never won. Thank you to everybody at HBO Max and to Warner Brothers Television for allowing the conditions to exist for lightning to strike in my life twice. I mean, who gets to do that? Yeah, like, who actually comes back and does the thing again and it actually goes better than the first time. And it was a big hit and it grew into a hit too. A lot of people like me, I actually saw it and I thought it was an ER reboot and I thought, ugh, I don't want to watch that. And then I started watching it and actually the things I liked about it were the things that were different from er. And I kept watching and I think I watched it in May. So it was like this slow burn where people, kids who had never seen er, all these people just slowly discovered it for themselves. And it grew into this, like, big hit in a way that I don't think anybody actually quite expected.

[Ad Host]

Here's the thing about being a great gift giver. When you find something truly perfect for everyone on your list, you almost don't want to give it away. That's what happened with my quints order. Everything's so soft and well made. I'm seriously tempted to keep it all for myself. Quince pretty much has your whole list covered. Mongolian cashmere sweaters for $50 when you'd normally pay 200 or more. They're the kind of sweaters you'll wear on repeat. Then there's denim that goes with everything. Silk tops and skirts for when you need to look put together. I recently got an Australian merino wool collared cable cardigan. It's a bit of a tongue twister, but it's the most comfortable sweater in my closet and I can't stop, stop wearing it. Fine. Gifts so good you'll want to keep them with quints. Go to quince.com infamous for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's qU-N-C-E.com infamous to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com infamous when I moved to New York City, I thought it would be easy to find a therapist. But Finding one who actually takes your insurance and who you like. That's where most online therapy platforms fall short. Many don't work with insurance at all, which means you're stuck paying the full cost out of pocket. Rula does things differently. They partner with over 100 insurance plans, making the average copay just $15 per session. That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price that actually makes sense. Plus, Rula sticks with you throughout your journey, checking in to make sure your care is helping you move forward. Thousands of people are already using Woola to get affordable, high quality therapy that's actually covered by Insurance. Visit woola.cominfamous to get started. After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's r u l a.com infamous. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.

[Vanessa]

I just want to go back to, like, Sherry's not gonna really actually see any of this money necessarily personally or her son. Do you believe when she says, I.

[Nick Coolish]

Am doing this, her son will get the money?

[Vanessa]

Oh, her son will get the money.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah, her son gets the money. So that's. I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

[Vanessa]

Okay, well, then that's a whole different story. I thought that she was gonna. It was just gonna go to his original family.

[Nick Coolish]

No, no.

[Vanessa]

Cause she says she's doing it just. Just to. In this time of AI and pressure on Hollywood, she's just trying to stand up for a content creator that doesn't have the resources to actually fight back in court.

[Nick Coolish]

Right. I mean, there have been some famous cases in the past about the people who made Superman originally for DC Comics. There's all these cases of who actually gets the money. And it always seems to gravitate toward big corporations and away from the. The little cobblers in the corner.

[Vanessa]

Right. The cobblers who came up with it.

[Nick Coolish]

But. So, I mean, I think, though it's the opposite. I think that this is just my personal opinion, but I think that the studio was seeing her too much through the lens of, like, oh, the widow wants money and didn't realize, like, this woman is still in love with her husband and thinks his name should ring out through the centuries like he is. And so for her, I think there really is a passion and a feeling behind this. And they're sort of, oh, maybe give her a little money and she'll go away. And it's like, I don't think that's actually. And she has so much money. When Jurassic World makes $850 million at the box office. She gets many, many years of lawyer's fees out of it.

[Vanessa]

Right, right, right. Yeah. No, I mean, I think you're right. I think that's what's fascinating about it is that the misunderstanding on each end and also on the. No, and that showrunner who we mentioned Wells a couple of times, his perspective that comes out in what you reviewed is like, look, you made, you know, the quarter billion dollars on er, Michael Crichton from writing this pilot, plus like a little couple notes here and there. And I, you know, this was my job every single day for 11 years. And I'm not faulting you, but like, that's the deal I made. But, like, why would you stand in the way of me and Noah doing this creat exciting project that's based on something that we devoted our lives, like our. The sum of our lives is based on that original ER series. Anyway, so, like, the fact that we're able to make this. We all know how it works in Hollywood. Like, the fact that they're able to actually get the deal to make this spin off is incredible. The fact that they have this opportunity, if she really cared about creators, like, why would she stay, you know, stand in the way? And you can see that perspective as well.

[Nick Coolish]

Totally. I mean, and I think there's also this question of there has to be a certain number of things that could be changed, at which point it's a different show. So, like, how many things are they. Cause you have people like David E. Kelly who make legal shows all the time, and you have actors who appear as doctors in multiple shows like Omar Epps, House and Grey's Anatomy, I think. And you have David Caruso, who's in NYPD Blue and csi. So you can't say, no, Wylie, you can't play a doctor again.

[Vanessa]

Right.

[Nick Coolish]

You know, and you can't say John Wells, you can't make a hospital show again.

[Vanessa]

Right. But it goes back to the ip, Right. So it's like the idea of there's Batman, whoever came up with Batman, whoever. Well, Mean Girls, interestingly, has a, you know, a suit like that with somebody we know and they. And we have covered that in Infamous. If anybody would like to go back and listen to our Mean Girls episode, we will have a link, a link.

[Nick Coolish]

In the show notes.

[Vanessa]

So you can hear about, you know, the person that Mean Girls was based on and her sister who wrote the book that it was based on, and how there was sort of a dispute with Tina Fey about who really came up with what There as well. But point being, when you have something like, you know, Five Nights at Freddy's. Right. Which my kids love, like, we're not gonna see a Five Nights at Freddy's movie. Like, you know, over and over every two years for the next 10 years. Like, when something works in Hollywood, there's gotta be a sequel, a prequel, there's a Better Call Saul for Breaking Bad, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is just. This is, you know, the world is noisy and to get heard, this is the best way to get heard. And people think, well, if they liked it the first time, they might like it the second time.

[Nick Coolish]

But the thing about this one is they didn't call it ER2. You know, they didn't say from the mind of Michael Crichton. So it's like they didn't get the benefit of calling it the sequel.

[Vanessa]

Yeah.

[Nick Coolish]

And so that's a question. How much are you paying the person for the idea and how much are you paying the person to use their name and the name of their show that was a hit?

[Natalie Robomed]

That's interesting.

[Vanessa]

But you can't copyright the name of a show, right?

[Nick Coolish]

No, that's true. So they actually could have called, but that probably would have been a little too close. But no, I mean, and part of the thing, I don't actually like a story where. Where it's obviously one thing, right. That's not a story. And you also don't usually get a fight where it's really clear that one side is wrong and one side is right. Because in that case you get, oh, sorry, my bad. That's the whole story.

[Vanessa]

Okay. Yeah, you're talking about this whole story. This whole story in toto is that kind of thing.

[Nick Coolish]

I could sit down and maybe this means I should have gone to law school, but I could sit down and construct an entire case for John Wells and Scott Gemmel and Noah Wylie, essentially the team behind the Pit, and say they created this show set in 2025, about what it's like to work in a hospital today, and they deserve to be able to make their show. And I can sit down and I can make a case for Sherry Crichton saying, they came to her, she had the rights, she didn't make a deal with them. And then they went around her. They even prepared a press release before this Max announcement with David Zaslav where it says, Noah Wiley will reprise his iconic role in a straight to series order to ER sequel. And I've seen this actual version four of the press release that was ready to go.

[Vanessa]

So Crazy. Yeah.

[Nick Coolish]

But on the flip side, the guy who I think probably has the most behind the scenes control over the show is this guy named Scott Gemmel. And when I read his comments, I actually get the sense that he was glad to not be making an ER reboot. Right. Cause like, an ER reboot, you know, you say George Clooney comes in and smiles in an episode, you have to like, bring back all the characters and it's cheesy. It's cheesy. And he said in his statement to the court, he said, when I was creating the Pit, I intentionally made it different than ER and every other medical drama I am aware of in as many ways possible. My goal was to do something completely new, a medical drama that had never been done before about critical issues plaguing our medical system and society at large, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID 19 pandemic. And I believe that. Cause I actually think if you're a writer, you do the ER reboot because, you know, you can get paid to do the ER reboot. But I think if somebody had come to them in 2020 and said, hey, I'll pay you the exact same amount of money to make a whole new cool show out of your imagination or to go back over the thing that you did for 13 seasons.

[Vanessa]

Right.

[Nick Coolish]

I think I know what he would have chosen.

[Vanessa]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with that. I think it is better. But I still think that the DNA is pretty similar.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah. There's two ways of looking at it. There's the legal way and there's just the normal person eyeball test thing. And what they're duking out in court is the legal question of whether this is an ER Rebo. But the sort of average person, and maybe this explains why they might not want to put it in front of a jury, the average person is going to say, I mean, kind of looks like ER to me.

[Vanessa]

Yeah, that's definitely true.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah.

[Natalie Robomed]

I mean, it's fascinating. And I do have to say, like, you do hear stories like this all the time in Hollywood. You know, you work on something and you don't get the proper credit, or you start working on a screenplay with someone and then they take it over and do it alone by themselves. And it's just a matter of, like, whether you actually have the means or energy to pursue it, to get what you might be owed from it. And then, like, you know, as you said, like, on the other hand, there's no such thing as an original idea. And how different does a thing have to be to be a new thing. You know, it's really, really tricky stuff. And I guess we'll just have to. Have to wait and see, right?

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah, no, absolutely. It'll be interesting to see where it goes and. And whether Sherry is somebody who is not as inclined to settle as quickly as other people.

[Vanessa]

Right. And it's. I mean, season two coming out, you know, in January, people are gonna watch. It's gonna be a hit again.

[Nick Coolish]

Yeah. I mean, I'm gonna watch, so.

[Vanessa]

Yeah. All right, everybody, check out Nick's story, which we will also have a link to in the show notes. If you're curious about this whole fiasco between Michael Crrichton's estate and, er, and the pig. And. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on Infamous.

[Nick Coolish]

It was so much fun to be here.

[Ad Host]

That's it for Infamous.

[Natalie Robomed]

If you enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and review and tell your friends. If you want to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at Natrobe. That's N A T R O B E. And if you want to support Vanessa's work, you can buy her book, Blurred Lines. Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus. See you next week.

[Nick Coolish]

And Doug, here we have the Limu imu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and. And save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Vanessa]

Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?

[Nick Coolish]

Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.

[Ad Host]

Liberty Savings Fairy. Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.

[Nick Coolish]

Excludes Massachusetts.