Where to watch ER (1994–2009)

Trivia & production notes

• Michael Crichton wrote the screenplay for ER in 1974 as a spec script titled "EW" based on his time as a medical student, but producers rejected it and he shelved the project for nearly two decades.
• Steven Spielberg chose to develop ER as a television pilot rather than a feature film after the success of Jurassic Park, seeing potential for ongoing stories in the emergency room setting.
• The original 1974 script required minimal changes for production; the main alterations were converting a male character to Susan Lewis and changing Peter Benton to African-American, plus trimming 20 minutes for TV time.
• The pilot episode was shot at the abandoned Linda Vista Hospital in Los Angeles, which had closed in 1990, due to budget constraints and lack of time to build a set.
• NBC initially rejected ER as a made-for-TV movie and only agreed to greenlight a pilot after the creators first pitched it to rival networks.
• David E. Kelley's Chicago Hope, which debuted in the same Thursday time slot on CBS, was expected to dominate ER but failed to do so.
• ER's medical consultant team included emergency physician Joe Sachs and pediatricians Lisa Zwerling and Neal Baer, ensuring accuracy in medical procedures and terminology.
• David Zabel became the series' most prolific writer, contributing scripts to 41 episodes across the show's 15-season run.
• James Newton Howard composed the original theme and pilot score, but Martin Davich scored all subsequent episodes and created a new theme that ran from 2006 until the finale, when Howard's original theme returned.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article ER (TV series), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.