“It would look a lot more like a small character piece centered around Carter 15 years later, dropping in on him wherever he was to make a jeremiad scream from the mountaintop about what was happening,” Wyle tells the outlet. Gemmill adds that they could have used old ER footage to contrast Carter’s journey: “That would’ve been a unique show, to be able to see Noah at 23 and then flash-forward to when he’s 52 or 53 and see that dichotomy. Whether it would have worked or not, I don’t know. But it would have been a fun experiment.”
Warner Bros. Television was apparently very interested in the revival idea (A studio? Trying to mine established IP? Shocking!), so much so that it “got pretty close to being a reality.” Unfortunately, WBTV couldn’t come to terms with the estate of Michael Crichton, who created the show. So the creative team “pivoted as far in the opposite direction as we could in order to tell the story we wanted to tell—and not for litigious reasons, but because we didn’t want to retread our own creative work,” Wyle says of The Pitt. Unfortunately, they were sued by Crichton’s widow for breach of contract under the claim that The Pitt was just a stealth ER reboot. But even though it might’ve been born out of those ER talks, Wyle clearly disagrees with the basis of the lawsuit. “We really wanted to find something new for ourselves,” he says. “And in some ways, that’s what was so disheartening about the whole thing. We really felt like we’d done it.”
Of the suit, which is ongoing, “The only thing that I can legally speak to is how I feel emotionally, which is just profoundly sad and disappointed,” Wyle shares. “This taints the legacy, and it shouldn’t have. At one point, this could have been a partnership. And when it wasn’t a partnership, it didn’t need to turn acrimonious. But on the 30th anniversary of ER, I’ve never felt less celebratory of that achievement than I do this year.”
