‘Red Alert’ producer: Failed Qatar strike, Hollywood boycott nearly stopped show going global

Israel’s failed strike in Qatar and a Hollywood letter boycotting Israel nearly postponed international distribution plans for “Red Alert,” a drama series produced by Israel’s Keshet Media Group about the Hamas-led terror onslaught of October 7, 2023.

“We had a plan to go out in September and sell it,” said producer Lawrence Bender, speaking to The Times of Israel. “Then Israel bombs Qatar and then the Hollywood letter, and investors rightfully asked, ‘So, what’s the plan?’ and we said, ‘We can’t sell this now. Everything is anti-Israel, we’ll have to hold.'”

A chance meeting with Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison at a memorial for an entertainment industry figure changed his plans.

“I know Ellison’s a Zionist, and I said, ‘You should know what I’m doing,'” said Bender. “I told him, and he said, ‘This is extraordinary, I need to see this.'”

“I didn’t have to pitch him,” said Bender.

Ellison assumed control of Paramount after an $8 billion buyout in early August by his family, led by his billionaire father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The younger Ellison, a onetime actor, had previously founded and run Skydance Media, a film and television production company.

The elder Ellison is known to be a prominent supporter of Israel and has contributed millions to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. He is a friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has hosted the Netanyahus on vacation.

While Paramount was still run by its former chairperson, Shari Redstone, another ardent Israel supporter, the company co-produced “We Will Dance Again,” a 2024 documentary film about the October 7 Hamas massacre at the Nova music festival, which later won an Emmy.

Paramount was the first major studio to respond to the Hollywood pledge signed by more than 4,000 actors, entertainers and producers, stating several days later that silencing individual artists based on their nationality does not advance peace.

In response, a group of roughly 30 Paramount employees sent a letter in September to Ellison and other senior executives slamming the company for “aligning” with “a genocide in Gaza and of the Palestinian people.”

The employee group also noted that while Paramount+, the company’s streaming service, was distributing “Red Alert,” it hadn’t offered equivalent programming about the Palestinian experience in Gaza during the war.

In late October, Warner Bros. Discovery became the second major Hollywood studio to reject industry calls to boycott Israeli film institutions.

Paramount is reportedly seeking to take over Warner Bros. Discovery.

The first two episodes of the four-part series — which was set to air domestically on Keshet whether it sold internationally or not — were nearly finished at the time of Bender and Ellison’s meeting in September.

“I sent everything we had on email, and he watched it and said, ‘This is amazing, it would be an honor to be your partner on this,'” said Bender.

The deal was made in two days, said Bender. Ellison then told him the entire series needed to drop on October 7, the second anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attack.

With just a few weeks until that date, Bender and his team spent days and nights finishing production on the episodes, working on music and edits.

The series premiered globally on Paramount+ on October 7. In Israel, the first episode aired on Keshet (Channel 12) on October 5.

Bender sees the show as a gripping TV drama that invites viewers to have an emotional experience while being faced with the magnitude of what happened on October 7.

With the show still available on Paramount+, Bender is currently participating in college campus and community screenings.

“I’m on that path every day,” he said. “The job isn’t done yet.”

Still, it’s unclear if “Red Alert” is having the effect that Bender hoped for.

While media reviews have been positive, noting the harrowing, terrifying realism of the series, some online reader reviews have called it propaganda, inauthentic, and fake news.

Anti-Israel voices have claimed the series is biased and called on users to cancel their subscriptions to the Paramount+ streaming service.

Bender said he doesn’t care.

“This show is not over for me,” he said. “This is like a tool; I did this to change hearts and minds. I want viewers to have an emotional experience, to have a conversation, and especially after hostages have come back, so that people can understand what really happened.”

On October 8, the day after the Hamas-led atrocities in which some 1,200 people in southern Israel were slaughtered and 251 abducted to the Gaza Strip, Bender, the producer behind Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Kill Bill,” said he felt isolated, alone, and angry.

“The world was against the people who had been attacked,” he said.

It came as a shock to Bender, who says he grew up in a liberal East Coast family with a mother who hosted draft evaders and hippies in their suburban home and took her kids to march in Washington, DC, against the Vietnam War.

He said those formative experiences pushed him toward making movies that reflect the lives and histories of his Black, Latino, and Asian friends.

“It was just the way I saw life,” said Bender. “But then on October 8, when my people were attacked, I didn’t get the same support from lots of people I consider friends. It was crickets.”

It was a presentation to a group of Hollywood insiders by Keshet CEO Avi Nir about the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack that convinced Bender to be part of the production team for “Red Alert,” created by Lior Chefetz and produced by Green Productions together with the Jewish National Fund USA’s Israel Entertainment Fund.

Bender spent time in Israel in the spring of 2025 working on the show, getting to know the October 7 survivors who were paired with the actors representing their experiences.

He recalls visiting the destroyed Kibbutz Nir Oz home of October 7 survivor Batsheva Yahalomi, whose husband, Ohad Yahalomi, was killed, and his body was taken captive, on that day.

Yahalomi, one of the survivors featured on “Red Alert,” was taken hostage but escaped from her captors with her young daughter and baby. Her 12-year-old son, Eitan, was taken hostage alone and released in November 2023. The body of her husband, Ohad Yahalomi, was handed over to Israel on February 27, 2025, under a hostage-ceasefire deal.

“I was having real conversations with real people about real stuff,” Bender said.

Having actors play the roles of real people who were present on set was difficult, he said.

“An actor needs freedom to do their own thing, and to have the real people intensely looking at you, it’s not easy,” he said. “But in some ways it’s incredibly moving. They were acting real stuff that hasn’t gone away.”