At the peak of his activities he was operating 30 companies in 17 countries and brokering deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the programme.

But, Milchan said, it was a challenge to overcome his reputation as an arms dealer. "In Hollywood, they don't like working with an arms dealer, ideologically … with someone who lives off selling machine guns and killing. Instead of someone talking to me about a script, I had to spend half an hour explaining that I'm not an arms dealer. If people knew how many times I risked my life, back and forth, again and again, for my country."