Lydia Woodward was a part of the first season production team and became an executive producer for the third season. He was the show's most prolific writer and became a regular director in later years. Wells, the series' other initial executive producer, served as showrunner for the first three seasons. Ĭrichton was credited as an executive producer until his death in November 2008, although he was still credited as one throughout that entire final season. Kelley's new medical drama Chicago Hope was expected to crush the new series, airing directly opposite ER in the Thursday 10:00 pm time slot over on CBS. ER 's success surprised the networks and critics alike, as David E. Then we moved it to Thursday and it just took off', commented Littlefield. ' ER premiered opposite a Monday Night Football game on ABC and did surprisingly well. Elsewhere.' With Spielberg attached behind the scenes, NBC ordered six episodes. Littlefield was impressed by the series: 'We were intrigued, but we were admittedly a bit spooked in attempting to go back into that territory a few years after St. studios in Burbank, California, although the show makes extensive use of location shoots in Chicago, most notably the city's famous 'L' train platforms. A set modeled after Los Angeles County General Hospital's emergency room was built soon afterward at the Warner Bros. Because of a lack of time and money necessary to build a set, the pilot episode of ER was filmed in the former Linda Vista Hospital in Los Angeles, an old facility that had ceased operating in 1990. The running time was shortened by about 20 minutes in order for the pilot to air in a two-hour block on network TV. The only substantive changes made by the producers in 1994 were that a male character was changed to a female character ( Susan Lewis) and the Peter Benton character's race was changed to African-American. The script used to shoot the pilot was virtually unchanged from what Crichton had written in 1974. Michael Crichton, the show's creator, pictured in 2002. They then tried to get the show greenlit at rival networks before returning to NBC, who this time around ordered a pilot. NBC offered a chance to make a two-hour made-for-TV movie from the script, which was rejected. Warren Littlefield, head of NBC Entertainment at the time, liked the project, but there was much debate and controversy among other executives at the network, who were dubious about the nature of the series. pitched ER to NBC, alongside Crichton, Spielberg and Wells.

Spielberg's Amblin Television provided John Wells as the show's executive producer. Bros Television, Les Moonves, about the idea for the series and to send the script. Anthony Thomopoulos, then head of Amblin's television division, got in touch with then CEO of Warner. He passed the script on to a team at his production company, Amblin Entertainment. Īfter its release, Crichton and Spielberg then turned to what was now known as ER, but Spielberg decided to film the story as a two-hour pilot for a television series rather than as a feature film after considering the potential for various stories to be told in the setting. In 1990, he published the novel Jurassic Park, and in 1993 began a collaboration with director Steven Spielberg on the film adaptation of the book. Producers were not interested in the screenplay, and Crichton turned to other topics. In 1974, author Michael Crichton wrote a screenplay then entitled ' ED' (for emergency department) based on his own experiences as a medical student in a busy hospital emergency room. As of 2014, ER had grossed over $3 billion in television revenue. ER won 116 awards in total, including the Peabody Award, while the cast earned four Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Ensemble Performance in a Drama Series. It won 23 Primetime Emmy Awards, including the 1996 Outstanding Drama Series award, and received 124 Emmy nominations. The show is the second longest-running primetime medical drama in American television history behind Grey's Anatomy. ER follows the inner life of the emergency room (ER) of Cook County General Hospital (a fictionalized version of the real Cook County Hospital) in Chicago, and various critical issues faced by the department's physicians and staff. It was produced by Constant C Productions and Amblin Television, in association with Warner Bros. ER is an American medical drama television series created by Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994, to April 2, 2009, with a total of 331 episodes spanning 15 seasons.

Emergency 20 metacritic