Is my favorite new tv show this year a ripoff?

Summary

Search Engine – "Is my favorite new tv show this year a ripoff?"

Host: PJ Vogt
Guest: Nicholas Kulish (NYT reporter)
Date: September 26, 2025

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Overview

This episode investigates the ongoing legal and ethical feud over the hit medical drama "The Pit," which has been accused of being a thinly veiled ripoff of the classic TV show "ER." PJ Vogt and Nicholas Kulish explore where inspiration ends and theft begins, how creative ownership and credit work, and the messy, intriguing details of the lawsuit pitting Michael Crichton’s estate against Warner Brothers and the creators of "The Pit." The discussion uses these events to examine the larger question: "When is it okay to copy someone else’s idea?"

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: When is it Okay to Copy?

• Intellectual property and idea-borrowing: Vogt describes the perennial creative struggle about how much inspiration is okay and when it crosses into ripoff territory.

  "Most people I talk to who make stuff have this gremlin...that tells them they can see exactly who has copied their homework and how..." – PJ Vogt (03:00)

• The case is brought to life via a public legal battle about authorship and credit for a major new TV show.

2. What is "The Pit" and Why is it Controversial?

• "The Pit" described as a real-time medical drama, starring Noah Wylie as a veteran ER doctor, bearing strong similarities to "ER."

  "The Pit is a show where doctors and nurses save the lives of patients who come into the emergency room...an hour of the show is an hour of the shift in the emergency room." – Nicholas Kulish (06:05)

• Immediate comparisons made to "ER," with nearly identical set-ups and even the same star, Noah Wylie.

• The question: Does "The Pit" owe its existence—legally or morally—to "ER," and by extension to Michael Crichton, its now-deceased creator?

3. Michael Crichton: Doctor, Novelist, Inventor of ER

• Deep dive into Crichton's background—his time in medical school, early pseudonymous thrillers, and breakout success with "The Andromeda Strain" (10:00–13:11).
• Crichton’s innovation: He took a genre (the medical drama), injected realism from his own experience, and co-created "ER" out of an old unproduced script ("Emergency Ward").
• Discussion of creative borrowing: Crichton was inspired by older works (e.g., his "Lost World" borrowed from Arthur Conan Doyle), raising questions about where homage ends and IP begins (14:39–16:43).

4. How ER Was Made – and by Whom

• Spielberg and Crichton dust off "Emergency Ward" and team up with showrunner John Wells.
• Key insight: Though Crichton and Spielberg conceived the idea and reaped most of the profits, John Wells was the creative force behind the show's daily storytelling. Wells's financial and creative role is highlighted in court documents (23:57).

  "Despite having worked on ER for more than a decade, [Wells] earned less than half of what either Crichton or Spielberg made... that's not a complaint, it's the deal I made." – Court docs summarized by PJ Vogt (24:14)

5. Enter "The Pit" – and the Lawsuit

• Noah Wylie tries to reboot his beloved character ("Logan" style, grizzled and older). He pitches an explicit ER reboot, emails John Wells, and reaches out to the Crichton estate (29:51, 40:48).
• "The Pit" emerges, starring Wylie as a similarly positioned emergency doctor but legally separated from ER’s universe. The show is a critical and popular hit, winning Wylie his first Emmy (32:05).
• Crichton's estate, led by his widow Sherri Crichton, sues, arguing the show is an unauthorized ER sequel or reboot. Their claim: the makers tried to get permission and, when denied, simply changed the names and details (32:29–34:44).

6. The Legal Drama: Receipts, Emails, and the Meaning of Credit

• The Estate's evidence includes damning emails from Wylie and Wells explicitly discussing an ER reboot, referencing character names, structure, and tone identical to what became "The Pit" (40:48–44:05).

  "A character study in the vein of Logan Picard and Joker Carter...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." – Noah Wylie to John Wells (40:48)

• The initial, explicit ER connection then vanishes, but the core show is largely unchanged.
• The judge refuses to throw out the case, finding substance to the Estate's claim (33:05).

7. The Core Question: What Do We Owe Our Creative Predecessors?

• Is "The Pit" a transformative work—or a cosmetic redecoration of ER's house?

• Vogt and Kulish agree: if the creators hadn't tried to get permission (and been refused), the legal peril would be less acute (45:13).

• Vogt’s take: He sides emotionally with creative freedom, arguing inspiration and transformation are the realities of art, and that the legal maximalism of estates can hamper culture.

  "If you tell stories, you'll steal and you'll be stolen from. It'll bug you. But if you're really good at what you do, it won't matter much." – PJ Vogt (46:24)

• Kulish’s (journalist's) take: The legal case is strong for the estate because of those early, explicit communications.

8. What Happens Next?

• Warner Brothers appeals. If they win, "The Pit" goes on. If not, a messy trial could expose internal emails, finances, and more, potentially forcing a high-dollar settlement (47:12–49:19).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On creative borrowing:
  “No idea is really truly original…If the thing borrowed is changed enough, transformed, recontextualized, reimagined, it's okay. So the actual determination…can be hard to make.” – PJ Vogt (02:54)

• On Crichton’s rise:
  “The Andromeda Strain came out before I was born and I actually saw it for the first time in a small, almost hut in Tanzania.” – Nicholas Kulish (10:49)

• On IP maximalism:
  “I find the word IP itself to be like a bad Andromeda strain…infect[ing] the minds of people who make anything ever at all…” – PJ Vogt (15:52)

• On the ER financial windfall:
  “There were 331…episodes…I did the math, it was about a quarter of a billion dollars, give or take. For Michael Crichton's take.” – Nicholas Kulish (23:57)

• On the lawsuit receipts:
  “Sherry Creighton has a lot of emails…saying, hey, we want to remake er and this is how we're proposing to do it…with this real time show where you're in the emergency room hour by hour with the older, grittier, Logan style Dr. Carter.” – Nicholas Kulish (40:26)

• On the core dilemma:
  “If you're gonna ask somebody for something, you should probably be ready if they say no, not to take it anyway.” – PJ Vogt (44:55)

• On the fate of the case:
  “If this case moved forward far enough, that's exactly the kind of thing they'd be trying to figure out because they'd be assessing damages. And does HBO Max or does Warner Brothers Discovery…want other creators knowing exactly how big the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is?” – Nicholas Kulish (49:19)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & core question about creative copying | 04:45
• Explaining "The Pit" | 05:49–06:39
• Introducing "ER" and Michael Crichton | 07:11–09:59
• Crichton's early career and story origins | 09:59–14:32
• Creative borrowing & The Lost World | 14:39–16:43
• Making of ER & showrunner dynamics | 20:23–24:22
• "The Pit": How the reboot idea was born | 27:06–32:13
• Legal fight and emails as evidence | 32:29–44:55
• Analysis and personal opinions | 45:13–46:55
• What’s next in the legal case? | 47:12–49:19

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Conclusion

This episode uses the controversy around "The Pit" and ER to ask fundamental questions about creativity, credit, and the shifting boundaries between homage, inspiration, and theft in modern entertainment. Through interviews, court documents, and revealing emails, the episode shows just how tangled and human the issues of creative ownership and inspiration can become—especially when money, legacy, and the ghosts of beloved TV shows are at stake.

Transcript

[PJ Vogt]

Hello Search engine listeners. Before we begin this week, some exciting news. I mean, exciting. Maybe I've become a person who overuses the word exciting. This news is not a firework over your head or a winning lottery ticket in your pocket, but it's good news. It's convenient news for our listeners who enjoy the show on Apple Podcasts. You can now become a paid subscriber directly on Apple and get access to extra episodes and ad free versions of our show. Just navigate to the normal show page for search engine the way you ordinarily would and you can, even if you want, sign up for a one month free trial. If you just want to briefly turn off my dulcet ad reads. Also, while you're there, please drop us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps people find the show. That's what we always say. It's true. But also it makes people here feel good. Okay, on with the show after these ads. This episode is brought to you in part by Viori A New Perspective on Performance Apparel Perfect if you're sick and tired of traditional old workout gear, Vuori clothes are incredibly versatile and comfortable. Perfect for whatever your day brings. They're designed to look great beyond the gym, whether you're running errands, heading to the office or meeting up with your friends. One specific Vuori item I would recommend is the core short. This is a short that started it all for Vuori. It is one short for every sport you can do for whatever sports you play. It's ideal for fitness, running and training, but also genuinely stylish and comfortable enough to just wear all day. Vuori is an investment in your happiness. For search engine listeners, they're offering 20% off your first purchase. Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the [e-mail] PJSearch that's V U-O-R-I.com PJSearch exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on any US orders over 75 bucks and free returns. Go to Vuori.com PJsearch and discover the versatility of Vuori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you in part by Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. Before you know it, you're drowning in software. Instead of growing your business that's where Odoo comes in. Odoo is the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one, fully integrated platform that handles everything. CRM, accounting, inventory, e commerce, HR and more. No more app overload, no more juggling logins. Just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable and designed to streamline every process so you can focus on what really matters running your business. Thousands of businesses have already made the switch. Why not you try Odoo for [e-mail] that's O-O-O.com welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. This week, a question, a medium sized question. When is it okay to copy somebody else's idea? Their song, their joke, their story? What is the difference between inspiration and a ripoff? Most of us agree that stealing ideas is wrong. But we also all know that it's complicated. All artists borrow. There's such a thing as inspiration. If the thing borrowed is changed enough, transformed, recontextualized, reimagined, it's okay. So the actual determination, unless we're talking about word for word, plagiarism can be hard to make. Or hard for most of us. Not so hard for most of the creative people I know. Most of them are dead certain in their hearts that they can tell exactly when they're being ripped off. And it bothers them. Most people I talk to who make stuff have this gremlin, this voice in their head that gets a little obsessive, that tells them they can see exactly who has copied their homework and how, and wishes on some deep level that they did not have to smile and pretend to not notice it. They wish they could get a creative restraining order. I'll be honest with you. I have this gremlin too. And I've had this feeling. And when I have, I've just told myself not to give into it. I remind myself that I borrow too. That no idea is really truly original. And sometimes that even works. But it's work trying to be better than your worst impulses. And so this week's story is emotionally satisfying to me because it's just about someone having one of these fights in public, publicly feuding about whether or not a story had been stolen. Stolen from a person who at the time the story was written was dead. And this possibly stolen story happened to have been one of the more celebrated TV shows this year.

[Noah Wylie]

Good morning, sunshine.

[DSW Ad Voice]

You obviously haven't seen this board.

[Noah Wylie]

Ah, we've seen worse. Nothing like a little challenge every now and then to keep everybody on their toes.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Dr. Rabinovich.

[Nicholas Kulish]

The pit is an emergency medical drama set at a hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

[PJ Vogt]

This is Nicholas Kulish, the person I first heard the story from. Nick works at the New York Times, where he's known for his sharp, deeply reported investigations.

[Nicholas Kulish]

The Pit is a show where doctors and nurses save the lives of patients who come into the emergency room. I think the thing that is most different about it from other shows is that it takes place in real time.

[PJ Vogt]

Yes.

[Nicholas Kulish]

So an hour of the show is an hour of the shift in the emergency room.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Melissa King. I will be joining you today. I just came from two months at.

[Noah Wylie]

The VA. Hey, welcome to the Pit. This is Dr. Jack Abbott.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Nice to meet you. I can't take how excited I am to be here today.

[Noah Wylie]

So talk to me at the end of the day. Ignore you.

[PJ Vogt]

So that's the Pit, a critically acclaimed, highly streamed medical drama that I lost some sleep binging this year. And now I'm gonna play you a clip of the show. It's been accused of brazenly stealing from perhaps the most famous hospital drama ever created.

[Actor portraying John Carter]

ER John Carter.

[Noah Wylie]

Yes, sir.

[Actor portraying John Carter]

Peter Benton. You the surgical student?

[PJ Vogt]

Yep.

[Noah Wylie]

Third year.

[PJ Vogt]

Good.

[Actor portraying John Carter]

We're going to be spending a lot of time together, so let me show you around so you'll be oriented. This is the admitting desk. If you need someone paged or a chart called up, you do it here. This is Timmy. Don't shake his hand. He's afraid of disease. This is the way to the lab.

[PJ Vogt]

And how would you describe ER to somebody who hasn't seen it?

[Nicholas Kulish]

ER Is an emergency room medical drama set in a fictional hospital in the city of Chicago where a bunch of doctors go around saving lives.

[Actor portraying John Carter]

Do you know how to start an iv?

[Noah Wylie]

Uh, actually, no.

[Actor portraying John Carter]

I thought you were third year.

[Noah Wylie]

I am, but all I've done is dermatology and psychiatry.

[Actor portraying John Carter]

The well dressed specialties.

[PJ Vogt]

Huh.

[Actor portraying John Carter]

Well, you find that surgeons, actually.

[PJ Vogt]

So on the one side, you have that show ER and on the other, the Pit. And the question is whether the person who created ER should also get credit for creating the Pit. On the one hand, the shows definitely have some similarities, which we'll discuss. On the other, the creator of VR is Michael Crichton, a wonderful writer who also happens to have died 16 years ago. How someone who died during the Bush administration could be viewed as the author of a TV show written last year. Sounds like maybe a Michael Crichton plotline from some novel about cryogenics gone wrong. But actually, the story of Crichton's very unusual career helps us understand how we got here today. I asked Nick to tell me about it. So one thing that I am slightly surprised that I did not know. I did not know that Michael Crichton created er. Michael Crichton to me, is Jurassic park guy. Can you just give me the backstory of Michael Crichton as a person?

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yeah, I mean, the story of Michael Crichton as a person is pretty amazing. He was going to medical school, and times were so different in those days that writing novels was a way to make money on the side to help pay for medical school.

[PJ Vogt]

How is that possible? Like, legitimately, how is that possible?

[Nicholas Kulish]

Well, nobody had cell phones in their hands, smartphones to look at, to scroll on. And so many people, instead of scrolling on phones, had these paperback books in their hand that they read.

[PJ Vogt]

This makes me so sad. And people paid a lot of money for these books. They weren't ad supported?

[Nicholas Kulish]

No, they paid very little money for them, but it was good money for the time. So you would actually go into a drugstore and there would be these wire rack stands that had these cheap paperbacks on them, trashy romance novels or thrillers or whatever, and people would pick them up for next to no money. And you read it while you stood in line at the dmv. And so Michael Crichton was writing books under a pseudonym, or actually under two pseudonyms, but mostly under one that were these kinds of, you know, thriller, action y kind of books. And they were selling well.

[PJ Vogt]

But the thing he thought he was gonna be was a doctor.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yes. He was going to medical school, and he also started doing the hospital routine, which he did in Massachusetts, in Boston.

[PJ Vogt]

And.

[Nicholas Kulish]

And those experiences are very much a part of the screenplay that he wrote.

[PJ Vogt]

And so he. But again, it's not like he's in medical school. Novel writing is something you can do for, like, side cash before he gets to writing his medical drama script. Like, what knocks him off the path of doctor who writes his way through medical school to just like, writer. Like, what happens?

[Nicholas Kulish]

I think probably the answer to that question is a book and a movie called the Andromeda Strain, which I have.

[PJ Vogt]

Not read or seen.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yeah, it's really strange. The Andromeda Strain came out before I was born and I actually saw it for the first time in a small, almost Hut in Tanzania.

[PJ Vogt]

Why were you in Isma's hut in Tanzania?

[Nicholas Kulish]

I used to be the East Africa correspondent for the New York Times and I was writing a story about sort of rural farmland issues. And I guess this old rabbit ear broadcast television in Tanzania, you. They're playing older movies because maybe they're not paying for the rights. Sorry to bust your spot there, Tanzania. Or they're just paying for really old movies because they're cheaper. And I just was sitting there watching this thing and it's pretty gripping. Basically it's the story of an alien pathogen that arrives on planet Earth and starts killing people.

[PJ Vogt]

All reports continue to indicate that the experiment was successful. Then we can feel confident your so called biological crisis is over as far as Andromeda's concerned. Yes, we have the organism at Wildfire and we continue to study.

[Nicholas Kulish]

And so it's like a medical mystery of what do we do and how do we solve this? And it's so hard because everything is different. You know, the cell structure is different and so it's outer space contagion before contagion.

[PJ Vogt]

However, with this new knowledge, there's no guarantee that another so called biological crisis won't occur again. Hmm, what do we do about that? Precisely, Seneca, what do we do?

[Nicholas Kulish]

And the movie was a big deal. And suddenly he was a big time novelist, but also a big time Hollywood guy.

[PJ Vogt]

And so what happens then? Like even still, like pre er, what does the rise of Michael Crichton look like from the Andromeda Strain?

[Nicholas Kulish]

Well, so he also takes a detour into directing. So he wrote and directed a movie called Westworld.

[PJ Vogt]

The robotic cowboy movie that they turned into an HBO show later.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Exactly. I mean, the breadth of his imagination and ability to think up these scenarios is pretty incredible. Although I did have a funny insight while writing this story, which was I was like Westworld, robots in a theme park, like run amok and start killing people. And I'm like, dinosaurs in a theme park. Run amok, start killing.

[PJ Vogt]

Westworld and Jurassic park park are the.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Same movie with robots instead of dinosaurs instead of robots.

[PJ Vogt]

He had some like deeply held fear of amusement parks, that he was able to spend some millions and millions of dollars.

[Nicholas Kulish]

There must have been a terrible incident where he was left behind.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah, I mean, I remember. It's funny, when I encountered him, it was like Jurassic park came out when I was in grade school. It was like the scary movie that your friends dared you to watch.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Mr. Hammond, I think we're back in business.

[PJ Vogt]

So then picking up his books felt like. It felt like Heady intellectual works because he would fill his science fiction with lots of science. And so you would be sort of like, I remember reading Jurassic Park, I remember reading the Lost World. And you feel like he gives you the feeling almost of being like an academic. Like, if you're not looking down on him, if you're looking up to him, it's a really fun reading experience because you feel like you're really parsing something.

[Noah Wylie]

What about the lysine contingency? We could put that into effect.

[PJ Vogt]

What's that?

[Nicholas Kulish]

That is absolutely out of the question.

[Actor portraying John Carter]

The lysine contingency is intended to prevent the spread of the animals in case they ever get off the island. Dr. Wu inserted a gene that creates a single faulty enzyme in protein metabolism. The animals can't manufacture the amino acid, lysine. Unless they're completely supplied with lysine by us, they slip into a coma and die.

[PJ Vogt]

But then there's exciting scenes where dinosaurs eat people and stuff.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yeah. Although I did want to mention something. You said the Lost World.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah.

[Nicholas Kulish]

And I do find myself thinking about the Lost World a lot in the larger context of this story. And, like, whose story is whose? And what belongs to the world and what belongs to the writer or the estate? Because the Lost World is the name of a book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, best known for the Sherlock Holmes series. And the Lost World is about finding dinosaurs in contemporary time. Like humans interacting with dinosaurs. Yeah.

[PJ Vogt]

Huh. I didn't know that.

[Nicholas Kulish]

And so the Lost World is an inspiration, I believe, for the Jurassic park books. And that's fine because it's in the public domain. You know, it's old enough that anybody can do that. But that idea of that larger question of when is culture something that we all use and that we're all able to riff on, versus when is culture something that is, like, locked up and locked down and belongs to this one person? Because I think it used to be more normal to sort of say, yeah, you know, somebody's gonna write a book with some dinosaurs in it. And now it's like, that's ip. There's no ip. Like, whose IP is this?

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah. I find, like, the word IP itself to be like a bad Andromeda strain, where it seems to infect the minds of people who make anything ever at all, where they're like, my ip. My ip. And like, this idea that once an idea has occurred to you, whether it was inspired by someone else, whether it really sprung completely from your mind, it is like something you have to protect, like land rights, like, it's just an instinct that I don't love. And I didn't know that about the Lost World. But it's interesting because it's like by nodding to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it's like he's making a kind of statement of values, which is to say it's okay to borrow ideas, it's okay to have a spin on somebody else's idea. Like even an idea as outlandish as dinosaurs are back, which really, I'm surprised anyone else would add, like, everything is probably gonna come from somewhere else.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yeah, absolutely.

[PJ Vogt]

So Michael Crichton was an incredibly prolific and successful writer who at least sometimes was inspired by other people's ideas. The story of how he would come to create er, the TV show, it actually starts as a movie script Crichton had written inspired by his med school experiences. It was called Emergency Ward.

[Nicholas Kulish]

So the Emergency Ward script had been kicking around for a while, and by a while, I think it might be like 20 years. And it just kind of sat and there was an idea from Spielberg that they would turn it into a TV show. But then they got distracted by the dinosaurs, as we all do.

[PJ Vogt]

Yes.

[Nicholas Kulish]

And they did the dinosaur thing. And then they came back and they were like, well, what about this hospital idea? And the hospital idea has deep, deep roots.

[PJ Vogt]

When Nick says the hospital idea has deep, deep roots, he means that the genre goes back before the invention even of TV. This is a medical radio drama that premiered in 1937 called Dr. Christian. Oh, Dr. Christian. Yoo hoo. Well, hello there. How are you, young lady? Oh, I'm all right. All told, more than a dozen radio medical dramas would find their way onto American airwaves. But the genre really explodes when it moves to television in the 1950s. Dr. Crane. We're simply frantic with worry about David. This is such an important moment in his career. Yes. Won't you be seated, please?

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Thank you.

[PJ Vogt]

This is a clip from the first ever TV medical City Hospital. We'll operate as soon as we can. I told that to David. But just when that will be, I can't say. In the intervening decades, more than 50 medical dramas hit American television sets. They get set in different hospitals, sometimes they're grittier, and at least once the doctor is a teenager. But for the most part, it's a genre not prone to innovation. The diagnosis is definite now.

[Noah Wylie]

Hodgkin's disease.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Don't tell my father.

[Noah Wylie]

I had no choice.

[PJ Vogt]

What's the matter?

[Noah Wylie]

Afraid of a little blood? His heart.

[PJ Vogt]

It's beating.

[EBGLIS Ad Voice]

Look at that.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Thank God.

[Nicholas Kulish]

I like to say about hospital shows. Like, where else can a baby be born and a life be heroically saved every single day or every single episode? And it not strain credulity.

[PJ Vogt]

Right, right. It's a place where actual drama happens. I will say I had to go to the emergency room like a month and a half ago for something that turned out to be nothing. And I was so disappointed. Like I was sitting in the emergency room and like nothing particularly exciting was happening. Like, people were not moving very quickly. No one was screaming. I was there for like three hours. Cause I was very low priority. And this is kind of a messed up thing to say, but at the very end, a person came in having like a psychotic break and I was a little bit like, finally, like drama.

[Nicholas Kulish]

You were very lucky because when I was a teenager, I went for what I thought was a broken foot, but turned out to be a sprained ligament.

[PJ Vogt]

Oh no.

[Nicholas Kulish]

And they brought someone in, an older, middle aged man, and they did the whole like, clear, clear, like working on him. And then, then they pronounced him dead. And then all turned around at once and saw me sitting on the bed next to him. And then somebody just pulled the curtain closed in front of me. And I thought they really should have done that right away. And I was like, traumatized is a more popular word now than it was in those days. But yeah, it definitely stuck with me. I left a mark. Not a really bad mark.

[PJ Vogt]

So to recap, Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg decided to take this old unmade film script and turn it into a TV show. In order to do that, they need a showrunner. So they bring in another person who will turn out to be a key character in our story. A person who will end up being on the other side of the upcoming legal battle. John Wells.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Basically, a meeting is set up between Michael Crichton and a TV writer named John Wells, who had been working on a Vietnam hospital show called China Beach.

[PJ Vogt]

MASH already existed.

[Nicholas Kulish]

MASH had already existed.

[PJ Vogt]

Right.

[Nicholas Kulish]

So China beach is a little bit of a mash for like the late 80s, early 90s. And so these two guys, this successful novelist whose Jurassic park book is everywhere, including my bedroom, and this TV writer coming off this hospital show. And they're bringing them together and they have this meeting of the minds and they agree to make this show. And they agree that they'll never talk down to the viewers. They will always throw medical jargon at them that they don't understand, but they won't mind because they'll just enjoy letting it run past them with verisimilitude and that's all true.

[PJ Vogt]

Like that was part of what was working about the show is that it felt adult and real relative to what people were used to.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yeah, I think that that was definitely a big part of it.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Dr. Green.

[Nicholas Kulish]

I mean, the thing about the error screenplay, the pilot eventually of the show is it's not dinosaurs. Right?

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Dr. Green.

[Noah Wylie]

What is it?

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Patient for you? Dr. Green?

[Noah Wylie]

Can't the intern take it nice for you?

[Nicholas Kulish]

It's about this doctor who is sleeping in a glorified broom closet who keeps getting woken up to go and deal with patients.

[Noah Wylie]

Can't the intern take it?

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

It's Dr. Ross.

[Noah Wylie]

Dr. Ross. I'll be right there.

[Nicholas Kulish]

And it's 24 hours in his life and he's trying to decide whether to go and work at a fancy medical practice where he'll make tons more money. But, you know, it's implied that he'll sort of be helping wealthy dowagers or stay in this exhausting, desperate place where gunshot wound victims come in. And it's like you're saving lives, you're exhausted and you're not making money. So it's, it's like a very realistic take on medicine.

[PJ Vogt]

But so I watched, I watched the pilot and did not finish it. I found it to be sort of like I was surprised at how slow it was.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Maybe you were just overly immune to the dreaminess of young George Clooney.

[PJ Vogt]

He looks really good.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Because that was, that was a big part of, I think, the early appeal of the show.

[PJ Vogt]

Obviously, ER was successful for reasons beyond George Clooney's intoxicating dreaminess. My favorite TV critic, Allen Sepinwall, has called that first season among the most self assured debuts the medium has ever had. ER was such a huge hit, it's actually hard for me to find modern things to compare it to. It ran for 15 seasons. It garnered 124 Emmy nominations, had vast global syndication. We just don't really make TV that big today. It was a hit during a much more profitable time for television and it would make its creators an astonishing amount of money.

[Nicholas Kulish]

There's this figure that is thrown around in the court documents that says that Michael Crichton made $800,000 of back end on each ER episode. And there were 331, I believe, episodes. And I did the math, it was about a quarter of a billion dollars, give or take. For Michael Crichton's take.

[PJ Vogt]

A quarter of a billion dollars?

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yes.

[PJ Vogt]

Okay.

[Nicholas Kulish]

For Michael Crichton, it's part of er that's also Steven Spielberg's company's take.

[PJ Vogt]

Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg. Crucially, they were not involved in the day to day operation of the show. It was their initial idea. But when it came to actually filling those 331 episodes with stories of different things that could happen in the hospital, that responsibility ultimately rested with showrunner John Wells and with the writers he managed. In one email that would later end up in court records, John Wells did point out that despite having worked on ER for more than a decade, he earned less than half of what either Crichton or Spielberg made. Although he added, quote, that's not a complaint, it's the deal I made. If privately the gremlin in John Wells head felt differently, or if he even had a gremlin in his head, that we can't know. In the end, ER was just not his ip, which meant in some sense he would always be a renter, not an owner. After the break, a new hospital show arrives. Or does it.

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[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

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[Nicholas Kulish]

Whoa. When did I get here?

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

What do you mean?

[PJ Vogt]

I swear it was just moments ago.

[Nicholas Kulish]

That I accepted a great offer from Carvana online.

[PJ Vogt]

I must have time traveled to the future.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

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[PJ Vogt]

It is the future.

[Nicholas Kulish]

It's.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

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[Actor portraying John Carter]

It's all good.

[PJ Vogt]

Happens all the time. Sell your car the convenient way to Carvana.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Pick up.

[PJ Vogt]

Times may vary and fees may apply.

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[PJ Vogt]

Welcome back to the show. So when I started watching the pit As a person who totally skipped er, one of the things that confused me was the Pit starring actor, the guy who plays Dr. Rabinovitch. I was confused because the actor was clearly in his mid-50s, a tremendous performer. And I just thought, how has this guy never been in anything? And also, how'd he finally get this big role? It turns out that that actor, Noah Wylie, is famous to lots of other people because he was one of ER's main characters. And Noah Wiley isn't just the star of the Pit. He was perhaps the driving force for getting the show on the air at all. Because for Noah Wylie, the Pit was an opportunity to re energize a Hollywood career that had cooled somewhat.

[Nicholas Kulish]

So to go back a step, when ER came out, it made stars of a couple people. George Clooney became a big star who we all know as a movie star, but ER was really his thing. And Juliana Margulies, you know, went on to be the good wife. And Noah Wylie, who was younger, stuck with the show a lot longer. I think he did 11 full seasons and then some additional appearances. So for him, ER was like a real job for more than a decade. He didn't jump straight into matinee idol. He did some other stuff. He played Steve Jobs in a very well received made for TV movie about the tech industry. But I think it's pretty clear for him that up until the Pit, ER was the pinnacle of his success.

[PJ Vogt]

Right?

[Nicholas Kulish]

And so that's how we find ourselves in February 2020, with Noah Wylie saying, hey, I know what the world needs. The world needs a television show called Carter, about my most famous character, Dr. John Carter. @ the time, he name checks these things, like Logan, right? You remember the movie Logan, As I.

[PJ Vogt]

Live and breathe, the Wolverine. Now he's a junkie now.

[Noah Wylie]

Who the fuck are you?

[PJ Vogt]

You know, oh, you got some buckshot in your door. Oh, it's so good. It was like Logan Wolverine from X Men. But they were like, we're just gonna make a movie about him and it's gonna be darker and sadder. I loved Logan. It was cool.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Exactly. So he's like, we need a Logan for Dr. John Carter. So the grizzled old guy, the white in the beard is a feature, not a bug.

[PJ Vogt]

Okay? And of course he wants this. Like, wouldn't you like to go back to your most famous role that everybody loved you for? And what does it look like? He's, like sending emails? Is he trying to write the scripts? Like, what's happening?

[Nicholas Kulish]

He's emailing people like John Wells, who worked on ER a lot in some of the later seasons. And so, yeah, so there's this, like, let's get the band back together and let's do an ER again, but coincidentally focused on my character, which sounds, like.

[PJ Vogt]

A little bit silly. And, like, whatever. Except for, like, they do make it. It's great. He's great.

[Nicholas Kulish]

I am legally obliged to say that Warner Brothers Television would not say that they made it. They would say that they made a different show. They do say it quite forcefully in lots of court documents, but, yes, they ended up making a hospital emergency room drama starring Noel Wylie as a grizzled old emergency room doctor.

[Noah Wylie]

You're afraid of making a mistake.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

I'm always afraid of making a mistake. Aren't you?

[Noah Wylie]

Yeah, of course I am. But you know what I mean. You make a mistake once and somebody dies and you feel so badly about it, you'll never let it happen.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

How is that wrong?

[Noah Wylie]

Because you waste time and money on unnecessary tests. You keep sick patients waiting too long.

[Nicholas Kulish]

And people really got into it. And one of the things that people seem to like about it is that it's not the bear. Oh, no, I'm just kidding. Did I say that?

[PJ Vogt]

That is a thing that I liked about it.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Right. They weren't like, oh, we're having a special episode where it's all about, like, this one surgeon who, like, sits with his scalpel for, like, an hour. You know, we should probably cut that. No, it's not a show that's, like, lost in its own poeticness. It's just like, let's save lives hour after hour, bring in a new patient in on the gurney. Like, let's keep doing this. Let's raise the stakes.

[Noah Wylie]

Being here means no matter how good you are or how hard you try, you're going to make another mistake and someone else might even die. That's called being an emergency medicine doctor. If you can't accept that, then maybe this isn't a place for.

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

I can accept that.

[Noah Wylie]

You sure?

[Actor portraying Dr. Rabinovich]

Yes.

[Noah Wylie]

Okay, good. Go save some lives. Clear some beds while you're at it.

[Nicholas Kulish]

The doctors are being doctors, and that's all I want, is to just watch these people be good at being doctors.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah. It must be so satisfying for Noah Wylie, where it's just like, it's the fantasy that never works out, where you're like, what if I could go back? And he goes back, and it turns out, like, people love hospital shows the same way they always loved hospital shows.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yeah. I mean, for Noah Wylie, it couldn't have gone Better. Like, he was nominated multiple times for Emmys for er, and he never won. And then he was like, let's do another hospital show. And he just won his first ever Emmy for Best Actor. So, I mean, yeah, it could not have turned out better for him.

[PJ Vogt]

So. Okay, so tell me, how does the drama around the drama start, the real life drama?

[Nicholas Kulish]

Well, before the Pit had even debuted, there was a lawsuit filed in California court that said that it was the Michael Crichton estate. And they said that it was an unauthorized sequel to or reboot of er.

[PJ Vogt]

And did they want to stop it from being made?

[Nicholas Kulish]

They wanted to stop it. I think it had already been made, but they were trying to stop it from being aired. The first step that Warner Brothers and the creative team behind the Pit took was to try to have the case dismissed. The courts did not agree, and that the judge in California did not grant Warner Brothers request.

[PJ Vogt]

The judge was like, we're not just going to dismiss this lawsuit out of hand. Right?

[Nicholas Kulish]

The judge was like, you know what? There's more to this than meets the eye.

[PJ Vogt]

Here we have reached a surprising twist in our story. Not that the judge made an early ruling in favor of the entity trying to stop the Pit. The twist is the identity of that entity, a character I did not expect to find in this story. And so who's behind the lawsuit? Like, who controls the Michael Crichton estate?

[Nicholas Kulish]

Okay, so we have to go back a couple steps. Michael Crichton, four times divorced, with a teenage daughter, begins dating a former soap opera actress named Sherry Alexander, Famous writer.

[PJ Vogt]

Marries former soap opera star, and tell me more.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Well, they have a romantic wedding in Hawaii in front of a waterfall, and she becomes pregnant. And then he falls ill with cancer, and he dies tragically while she's pregnant with their unborn son. And so there's some back and forth over exactly who controls the estate and how, but at the end of it, Sherry Crichton ends up as the CEO of Crichton Son, which controls his archive and handles a lot of these kinds of rights negotiations. And she is not a passive collector of royalties.

[PJ Vogt]

Okay?

[Nicholas Kulish]

So since her husband passed away, they've done four Michael Crichton books. Two of them were books that he had written but hadn't published. Another one is called Micro, and is finished by an author named Richard Preston. And then I think the best known work is called Eruption, and it's finished by James Patterson, becomes the New York Times number one bestseller last year. And for a person who died in 2008, Michael Crichton has A pretty huge presence, right?

[PJ Vogt]

As a person. You yourself is working on a book. Posthumously. He's publishing, I think, more than you have recently.

[Nicholas Kulish]

That's a particularly mean. Mean way of putting it. Yes.

[PJ Vogt]

He also has a lot more help, though. Like, if somebody was like Nick Coolidge. We're giving you James Patterson.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yeah, I was about to say James Patterson. If you're listening, meet me at the Brooklyn Public Library on Sunday. I could really use your help.

[PJ Vogt]

The Crichton estate, led by Sherry Crichton. In addition to publishing books and approving new Jurassic park movies, they also fight to make sure Michael Crichton keeps getting as much credit as possible on the new material that's made out of his old ip. But crucially, for our story, the Estate lost one of those fights not too long ago. You can see that defeat happen in real time by watching the beautiful opening credits to the pilot of HBO's TV show Westworld, which came out in 2016. While Michael Crichton's name appears in the show's credits, he's not listed as the show's creator, which to the Estate felt disrespectful.

[Nicholas Kulish]

They firmly believe that he should have been considered the creator of the television series and that at the beginning of every episode of that show, it should have said, created by Michael Crichton.

[PJ Vogt]

I mean, okay, in their defense, I didn't know it was a Michael Crichton series. Not in their defense, One, I don't pay a lot of attention to things. And two, he was dead at the time that they made the TV series.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yes, this gets into the naughty K N o T T Y questions about intellectual property.

[PJ Vogt]

Can dead people have new ideas, or can dead people get credit for new ideas?

[Nicholas Kulish]

Exactly. It's like, how much credit do you give to the person whose idea has been reanimated by people after their death?

[PJ Vogt]

And obviously, the Estate is always going to have a maximalist view of this.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Definitely. And I think that for this story, what matters is the Crichton estate believed that Warner Brothers Television had not given proper credit and respect to their departed loved one. And they held that grudge into future projects.

[PJ Vogt]

So the Crichton estate, led by Michael's widow, Sherry, tries to get as much posthumous credit on Michael Crichton's behalf as possible. But with Westworld, they feel like they didn't succeed. Flash forward a decade to the moment at hand. As nick mentioned, in August 2024, the Creighton Estate tries to file a lawsuit to prevent the Pit from ever seeing the light of day. But the courts are slow, TV is relatively fast, and this past January the Pit premieres and lots of people watch it, including Nick. So before you started to actually look at the lawsuit, like, what did you walk in thinking?

[Nicholas Kulish]

So I think I found myself the way a lot of people would, watching the TV show, scrolling on my phone and reading that Michael Crichton's widow had sued the makers of the Pit, saying that they owed her and the Michael Crichton estate, more importantly, for making this sort of ER reboot. And my reaction to that was, that's crazy. It's not called er, it's called the Pit.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah.

[Nicholas Kulish]

It's not set in Chicago, it's set in Pittsburgh. That character's name is not Dr. John Carter, it's Dr. Rabinovitch.

[PJ Vogt]

And like, hospital show is a genre.

[Nicholas Kulish]

And hospital show is a genre. So you know, what's she up to? And I think there are some obvious stereotypes that come into play. Right. The widow, you know.

[PJ Vogt]

Wait, the widow who's like trying to steal ip? That's not a stereotype?

[Nicholas Kulish]

No, the widow's wringing money out of the. I think, I think there's like, people have those, like the greedy widow ideas. Right?

[PJ Vogt]

Okay, yeah, yeah.

[Nicholas Kulish]

But when I started looking into it, because I'm the kind of person who watches a TV show and reads the Wikipedia page and then starts downloading court documents. It's so funny.

[PJ Vogt]

Cause the human impulsive. I just watch a show, I wanna read something on the Internet. I also have. It's never extended for me to court documents around the production and I'm slightly jealous.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Well, I mean, it should. Court documents are, as we'll see, the best.

[PJ Vogt]

So what do you find?

[Nicholas Kulish]

Well, what I find is a much more complicated story, because in the parlance of your time, Sherry Crichton has a lot of receipts. Oh, Sherry Creighton has a lot of emails. And these emails are from John Wells, Noah Wiley, and they're very detailed and very emotive. And they are saying, hey, we want to remake er and this is how we're proposing to do it with this real time show where you're in the emergency room hour by hour with the older, grizzled, Logan style Dr. Carter.

[PJ Vogt]

I see. So they'd asked for permission first.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yes. They very, very clearly ended up in negotiations with the Crichton estate about rebooting ER with a show that to the layperson, looks a lot like the show that ended up being the Pit.

[PJ Vogt]

Can you read any of these emails?

[Nicholas Kulish]

So here's an email that was attached To Sherry Crichton's declaration to the court. That is from Noah Wylie to John Wells. And it says subject line, A not so crazy idea. I then had my not so crazy idea. A character study in the vein of Logan Picard and Joker Carter. 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. Is he practicing in Africa? Chicago? Is there any money left? Did he and Kem make it? I suspect that's a romantic partner from after I stopped watching er. Was there a kid? Did he ever slip? How he's framed. The last 15 years would be interesting to a lot of people. What he feels about it all today would be equally so. I don't think I would have ever liked this idea before now. But there are things I want to say that need to be said and I keep hearing them in his voice.

[PJ Vogt]

And so this is Noah Wylie to John Wells, the original ER writer.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yes, well. Well, originally, ER writer is my favorite person who wrote yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[PJ Vogt]

We must credit Michael Crichton. Michael Crichton in some ways is responsible for Search Engine, but okay, so on the one hand, she's got them a little dead to rights, because clearly this started out as an ER reboot. On the other hand, as someone who watched the Pit and really enjoyed it, there's a lot of stuff in that pitch that's gone. Like, I don't know who the person from ER is, because they don't use that backstory. Like they gave him a new backstory and basically it's the same character with a different name. It's close.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Yeah, yeah.

[PJ Vogt]

Nick reached out to both the people in this email thread, Noah Wylie and John Wells, for comment. They both declined, but while they didn't want to talk, presumably because of ongoing litigation, their emails tell a story of their own. After that internal email describing the gritty ER reboot, John Wells, former ER showrunner, wrote an email of his own directly to Michael Crichton's widow, describing his vision for how the story would look on screen.

[Nicholas Kulish]

So this is an email that says from John Wells to Sherry Crichton from February 2023. He says to her, so what was the idea that made me think that we should Revisit Chicago memorial 15 years later?

[PJ Vogt]

Oh, no.

[Nicholas Kulish]

A 12 hour shift. An hour. An episode that spills over into a 14 hour shift. Michael's original screenplay. Our pilot episode was a day in the life of the ER and Mark Green. Oops. 30 years later, it was to be a 14 hour shift for John Carter, no WY, now the attending physician in the ER. The idea was to show the continuing collapse of public hospital emergency room care as chronic homelessness, fentanyl and the aftermath of the pandemic have eroded the public health system. We could see Carter arrive for the beginning of his shift.

[PJ Vogt]

I can almost see it. He's got the AirPods in, he's listening to music.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Follow him through the 14 hours of his day, considering whether he can keep doing this work and watch him regain his purpose and recommit to his profession.

[PJ Vogt]

It sounds a lot like the show that I watched.

[Nicholas Kulish]

It does sound a lot like the show. And so after reading these emails, I had to, as a few of your listeners might say, update my priors. I'm not saying that Sherry Crichton should win or Warner Brothers should win, but I'm saying after reading these emails, I understood why Sherry Crichton felt that they'd kind of gone around her to make the show.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah, generally speaking, if you're gonna ask somebody for something, you should probably be ready if they say no, not to take it anyway. And I'm sure they feel that they adjusted the story enough that it's okay. But I understand why she would feel like that's not the case.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Right. I think, and this is my opinion, not an informed legal opinion, but just my opinion as someone who's read all the documents. I think that if the people had made the Pit and called it the Pit without ever talking to Sherri Creighton that they wouldn't be in court and we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it.

[PJ Vogt]

What Nick's saying is not that the estate is necessarily right. He's saying those emails mean the estate has a viable legal case. Nick is a reporter for the New York Times, as well as a careful person by temperament. So he's not going to render his personal verdict here, assuming he has one. But I'm a podcaster and much more risk tolerant, so I'll give you mine. I don't know what Michael Crichton would have wanted to Most people enjoy getting lots of credit and money for their ideas, but hearing the story of his career, what strikes me is that he was a deeply inspired person. The stories he told may have had roots in other stories, all the hospital dramas that preceded er, the dinosaur stories that preceded Jurassic park, but when Crichton told his versions, they had more power. He could tell a story that made people all over the world listen in a way that is exceptionally rare. And he Got paid for that a lot, as he should have. But the idea that now that he's gone, his estate should be able to stop other people from telling stories that are inspired by er, but not, in my view, adapted from er, I just don't agree with that. I think that logic belongs to the world of lawyers, not the world of storytellers. If you tell stories, you'll steal and you'll be stolen from. It'll bug you. But if you're really good at what you do, it won't matter much. Michael Crichton was very good at what he did. So are the people who made the Pit. What will shake out in court, though, that's a different matter. So what's the most likely? Like, I know how much you love making predictions, particularly recorded in public, but, like, what's the likely outcome of where this goes?

[Nicholas Kulish]

Well, I think the next step is the easy part to describe, which is Warner Brothers is appealing the judge's decision. And so if they win on appeal, then I think it's likely that they win and they get to continue making the Pit. And the Crichton estate is frustrated. I think that if Warner Brothers and the creative team lose again, they will have a pretty big incentive to settle, because this is a big, complicated case that sprawls in a lot of directions. I don't think any of them are directions that an entertainment company really wants them to go.

[PJ Vogt]

You mean it could just get very messy for them.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Well, so I was reading those emails to you.

[PJ Vogt]

Yeah.

[Nicholas Kulish]

And nobody really wants their emails read out loud on a podcast. Right. But those were the messages that they sent to Sherry Crichton, a person who they might reasonably have expected to sue them at some point over this.

[PJ Vogt]

Oh, if there's a bunch of discovery.

[Nicholas Kulish]

What were they saying to each other? Writing back and forth.

[PJ Vogt]

Right.

[Nicholas Kulish]

It has been mooted and suggested that the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, could be asked for a deposition or to sit in the witness stand. That's the kind of thing that people try not to let their CEOs do. More importantly, there's a big debate going on about how much money there is for writers or how big the pot of money is that should be shared. And in a lot of ways, it's opaque. How do you say what is owed to the people who made the Pit out of the money that was spent on a subscription to hbo Max? That's very hard to figure out. But if this case moved forward far enough, that's exactly the kind of thing they'd be trying to figure out because they'd be assessing damages. And does HBO Max or does Warner Brothers Discovery? Do they want other creators knowing exactly how big the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is?

[PJ Vogt]

Certainly not.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Probably not.

[PJ Vogt]

Nick, thank you.

[Nicholas Kulish]

Thanks so much for having me.

[PJ Vogt]

Nicholas Coolish will include a link to his story about all this in our show notes and you should also keep an eye out for his forthcoming book about Bill Gates. I predict it will be IP worth feuding over.

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[PJ Vogt]

There.

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[PJ Vogt]

Search engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt and Shruti Pinamani. Garrett Graham is our senior producer. Theme, original composition and mixing by Armin Bazarian. Fact checking this week by Natsumi Ajasaka. Additional production support from Emily Moltair and Kim Kuble. Our executive producer is Leah Rhys Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey, Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kirk Courtney and Hilary Schoph. Our agent is Oren Rosenbaum at uta. Follow and listen to Search Engine wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in two weeks.

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