Lawyers for the HBO Max medical drama The Pitt have hit back at claims that the show is an ER rip-off.
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In a court submission in California on Monday (May 11) via Deadline, the defendants, which also include producer John Wells and lead actor Noah Wyle, described the proposition that The Pitt is a “derivative work of the ER as baseless.”
It comes after ER creator Michael Crichton’s estate first brought the case against Warner Bros. in 2024. ER, which starred George Clooney and Wyle, ran from 1994 to 2009.
“Plaintiff seeks to kill The Pitt – and claims it should never have aired – based on a plainly incorrect misreading of a single phrase in a 1994 contract that gave Crichton approval rights over ‘derivative works’ of ER,” the submission read.
Citing a lack of sufficient evidence, the defendants claim that “The Pitt contains no protected elements from ER: aside from sharing a genre (hospital drama) and certain unprotectable, genre-specific tropes, like the use of medical jargon, the two shows are nothing alike. Wyle certainly does not play the same character.”
The defendants also stated that the the Crichton estate filed the lawsuit before The Pitt even debuted and that the estate had “at one point considered, but ultimately abandoned, the idea of making an ER reboot that shared certain ideas with The Pitt – such as real-time pacing – that never appeared in ER itself.”
The initial lawsuit accused the producers of breach of contract, and claimed that The Pitt was only created because a deal between the parties to reboot ER fell apart.
The producers tried to throw out the estate’s complaint under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, which is intended to protect free speech against frivolous litigation. A trial judge denied the motion, saying the estate’s claims had enough merit to proceed.
An appeal was submitted arguing that the trial court did not apply the correct standard and that under the anti-SLAPP statute, the plaintiff’s claims must be struck unless they are found to be “both legally viable and supported admissible evidence.”
The case is now heading toward oral arguments in the appellate court.
The second season of The Pitt is currently streaming on HBO Max and NOW TV in the UK.