‘Law & Order’ and ‘The Wire’ Veteran Dies After ‘Brief Illness’: Eric Overmyer Was 74

March 18, 2026, 4:09pm

Eric Overmyer, whose storied career as a writer/producer included work on Law & Order, The Wire, Bosch and Bosch: Legacy, has died. He was 74.

The Emmy-nominated TV veteran died on Monday after a brief illness, Deadline reported on Wednesday.

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DEAUVILLE, FRANCE – SEPTEMBER 12: Eric Overmyer attends a photocall during the 41st Deauville American Film Festival on September 12, 2015 in Deauville, France. (Photo by Francois Durand/Getty Images)

“Not only was Eric a superbly talented writer, he was just one of those people everyone loved,” Law & Order creator Dick Wolf told the outlet in a statement. “We are all going to miss him.”

Overmyer’s career began as a writer for St. Elsewhere, but after a string of other short-term television writing jobs, he found a home on NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street in 1996. Overmyer would go on to work on the series for four years, through its seventh and final season, before subsequently co-writing and executive producing Homicide: The Movie.

From the world of Homicide, Overmyer was brought in on Season 4 of his friend and fellow writer/producer David Simon’s critically-acclaimed HBO series The Wire in 2006. The two would next go on to co-create and executive produce the post-Hurricane Katrina drama Treme, which aired from 2010 to 2014, for HBO.

Most recently, Overmyer developed Prime Video’s long-running Bosch adaptation for the streamer, serving as executive producer and showrunner on the Titus Welliver-led crime drama from 2014 to 2021. He also co-created and executive produced the spinoff series Bosch: Legacy, which ran from 2022 to 2025.

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – JULY 12: Executive producer/writer Eric Overmyer speaks onstage at the “Bosch” panel during the Amazon Prime Instant Video portion of the 2014 Summer Television Critics Association at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on July 12, 2014 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

His other TV credits include stints on NBC’s Law & Order, which he also executive produced, as well as Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. Overmyer is also credited as a co-writer on the 1998 ABC movie Rear Window and the 2016 Nat Geo miniseries Saints & Strangers.

Overmyer was nominated for four Emmy Awards throughout his career, as well as for five WGA Awards, one of which he won in 2016 for Saints & Strangers.

In addition to his work on television, Overmyer had another career as a playwright for off-Broadway and regional theater productions, including On the Verge; or, The Geography of Yearning (1985), In a Pig’s Valise (1989), Mi Vida Loca (1990), The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin (1993) and Dark Rapture (1996).