Simon Cowell is back in business and set to star as a judge on the Israel version of The X Factor.
The music mogul has spent some of the second half of 2020 recovering from complex back surgery after an electric bike accident.
He will be a judge on the fourth season of The X Factor in Israel, which airs on Reshet 13 and has just gone into production. It marks the first time that he will be a judge outside of the UK and U.S. on the singing competition show he created.
Cowell said, “Over the years The X Factor format discovered amazing talents from all over the world, I can’t wait to see what Israel have to offer.”
The third season of The X Factor Israel, which is hosted by supermodel Bar Refaeli, aired between October 2017 and January 2018. Judges have included rapper Subliminal, pop star Ivri Lider, R&B singer Shiri Maimon and songwriter Moshe Peretz.
It comes as The X Factor, a staple of ITV schedules in the UK, was rested in 2020, the first time in 16 years that it didn’t air in Britain. Cowell signed a five-year deal with ITV for his other show, Britain’s Got Talent, which also included another season of The X Factor and Cowell is now working out how to breathe new life into the format in the UK.
The X Factor ran for three seasons in the U.S. on Fox between 2011-13 with Cowell as a judge.
Cowell was forced to miss the live shows of America’s Got Talent earlier this year as a result of his accident. The NBC show replaced him with guest judges including Kenan Thompson during the first two quarter finals before the remainder of the competition format was conducted with only three judges.
He is also working on a new CBS competition series, 50 States to Stardom, as revealed by Deadline in October, where he has paired up with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard.
Cowell told Deadline earlier this year that the Covid-19 lockdown had provided him with some time to come up with new formats.
“I have had to use my brain more than any other time of my life both on the current shows we own and the new shows we are going to make,” he said. “I have had more time than I’ve ever had before so we have, for instance, three new formats which we didn’t have 12 months ago because I’ve had the time to work on them, develop them properly and the last time I did that or had the time to do it, honestly was around 2005 – which was about the time I came up with Got Talent. I’m very excited.”