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Keshet Media Group’s CEO, Avi Nir, has been selected as an honoree of the Variety500 - an annual index of the 500 most influential business leaders shaping the global media industry. Now in its eighth year, Nir has been honored every year since the Variety500’s inception in 2017.

Since being appointed CEO in 2002, Nir has led Israel’s most successful media company onto the global stage and championed Israeli IP and talent in Hollywood and abroad, particularly since launching Keshet International (KI), the media group’s global studio and distribution company, in 2012.

Keren Shahar, CEO of Keshet International, says, “Avi’s belief in Israeli story-telling and creativity provides a guiding light and an inspiration to so many within the media industry, both in Israel and on the international stage. Under his visionary leadership, Keshet remains the campfire around which all Israelis gather: a multiplatform media company with the responsibility to entertain, inform, engage, connect and uncover - a duty it never takes lightly, now more than ever. We are delighted to see Avi’s irrepressible passion and unwavering commitment to excellence being recognized for an eighth consecutive year in Variety’s annual index of influential media leaders.”

This year’s edition of the Variety500 notes that in the last year, KI has sold Keshet Broadcasting’s limited thriller Trust No One to Netflix ahead of its premiere on Keshet 12, Israel’s most-watched TV channel; and that seasoned producer Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Good Will Hunting, Inglourious Basterds) will be co-producing Keshet’s five-part action thriller Red Alert with Green Productions to coincide with the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks later this year.

During his tenure, Nir’s crystal ball instincts and passion for content have paved the way for Israeli stories and voices to travel the global: for Keshet’s Prisoners of War to become eight seasons of Showtime's multi-award-winning Homeland; for the award-winning Keshet dramas When Heroes Fly and False Flag to be remade as Echo 3 and Suspicion for global streamer Apple TV+ (by Keshet Studios and Keshet UK respectively); for Keshet Studios to retell the events that led to 2014 Gaza war in Our Boys for HBO; for Keshet UK to represent marginalized voices and disabilities in The A Word and spin-off Ralph and Katie for BBC One; and for Keshet Studios to retell the inspiring story of Miep Geis, the woman who helped hid Anne Frank and her family during World War II, in A Small Light for Disney+.