Avi Lerner Movies and Career Information

Lerner originally worked in movie theaters in Tel Aviv, but soon re-located to South Africa, where he produced several films in that country and also owned a chain of movie theaters there until he re-located once again to Los Angeles in the early 1990s. In 1991, he served as President of the independent production/distribution company, Global Pictures. Lerner founded two production companies, Nu Image and Millennium Films with Trevor Short, Danny Dimbort, and Danny Lerner. The vast majority are action films. Many are filmed in Bulgaria, where he owns a tin-roofed studio converted from a communist era warehouse. Nu Image & Millennium Films bought independent film studio First Look Pictures and have restructured the organization to distribute their specialty films. The bulk of Lerner's films featured action stars who were at their peak in the late 1980s-1990s: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, and Chuck Norris, usually released as direct-to-video. Lerner produced Rambo starring Sylvester Stallone, Righteous Kill starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino for Millennium Films and Emmett Furla Films.[1] He also produced The Expendables, directed by Stallone.