iWorld
Veere Di Wedding premiereson ZEE5
MUMBAI: After the phenomenal success of digital premieres of movies such as Padman and Parmanu, ZEE5 now brings theblockbuster VeereDi Wedding to your fingertipsonWednesday, 1st August 2018. That’s another stereotype the movie breaks – THEATRE KE BAAD, PEHLI BAAR on ZEE5!Since its theatrical release in June 2018, the film will now be available exclusively for ZEE5 subscribers.
Watch the trailer here:
Manish Aggarwal, Business Head – ZEE5 India said, “THEATRE KE BAAD, PEHLI BAAR is a property we created with Padman and are committed to reach incremental audiences by giving them blockbuster releases on ZEE5 straight after the theatre release and before the movie airs on broadcast channels.Padman, Parmanu and now Veere Di Wedding – the past two months have been exciting for us and the offering has been widely appreciated by our subscribers too.”
He further added, “Premiering a movie such as Veere Di Wedding, one that celebrates friendship, just ahead of Friendship Day is very special. With this, we are taking another step towards building a robust portfolio of content – original as well as syndicated.”
Commenting on the premiere,Ekta Kapoor, Producer, Veere Di Wedding said, “When we decided to make Veere Di Wedding, we knew it was going to be nothing like anything else. These are girls who don’t conform to stereotypes and in fact go on to shatter glass ceilings, with pure entertainment. The unprecedented box office numbers sky rocketed Veere Di wedding into another space and I am excited about the big digital premiere on ZEE5.”
Veere Di Wedding revolves around four childhood friends Kalindi (Kareena Kapoor), Avni (Sonam Kapoor), Meera (ShikhaTalsania) & Sakshi (Swara Bhaskar) and their unbreakable bond of friendship. Things start to change when the pack of four meets after 10 years.Exploring the themes of sexuality and sisterhood, the movie went on to create quite a stir among movie-goers, initiating conversations across platforms.
ZEE5 has a wide repertoire of visual content including movies as well as web series under multiple genres such as comedy, drama, thrillers, horror, biopics and so on.
Download the App using the special offer – 2 months’ subscription @99/- only or @499 for a year – special offer until 15th August.
ZEE5 has a rich bouquet of original content in six regional languages along with the latest blockbuster movies. The platform will launch 20 originals in 2018 and will have 90+ shows by the end of March 2019.
With over 3500 films, 500+ TV shows, 4000+ music videos, 35+ theatre plays and 90+ LIVE TV Channels across 12 languages, ZEE5 truly presents a blend of unrivalled content offering for its viewers across the nation and worldwide. With ZEE5, the global content of Zindagi as a brand, which was widely appreciated across the country, has also been brought back for its loyal viewers.
Availability: The ZEE5 App can be downloaded from Google Play Store http://bit.ly/zee5 and iOS App Store http://bit.ly/zee5ios. Also available at www.zee5.com, as a Progressive Web App (PWA), and on Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV Stick. ZEE5 also supports Chromecast.
Pricing: Freemium pricing model with both free and paid premium content (including Originals) to cater to a mix of audiences. Viewers who subscribe to the ZEE5 subscription pack will get access to the entire library of content at a special offer price of INR 99 for two months and INR 499 for a year – special offer until 15thAugust.
iWorld
Bill Ackman makes a $64bn bid for Universal Music Group
The hedge fund boss wants to list the world’s biggest record label in New York and thinks he knows exactly what ails it
NEW YORK: Bill Ackman wants to buy the world’s biggest record label. Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by the billionaire investor, submitted a non-binding proposal on Tuesday to acquire all outstanding shares of Universal Music Group in a business combination transaction worth roughly $64.4 billion (around 55.8 billion euros).
Under the terms of the offer, UMG shareholders would receive 9.4 billion euros in cash, equivalent to 5.05 euros per share, plus 0.77 shares of a newly created company, dubbed New UMG, for each share held. Pershing Square values the total package at 30.40 euros per share, a 78 per cent premium to UMG’s closing price on April 2.
The deal would see UMG merge with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, with the combined entity incorporating as a Nevada corporation and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. New UMG would publish financial statements under US GAAP and become eligible for S&P 500 index inclusion. Pershing Square says the transaction is expected to close by year-end, with all equity financing backstopped by Ackman’s firm and its affiliates, and all debt financing committed at signing. The transaction would cancel 17 per cent of UMG’s outstanding shares, leaving New UMG with 1.541 billion shares outstanding.
Ackman has a long history with UMG. Pershing Square first bought approximately 10 per cent of the company from Vivendi in the summer of 2021 for around $4 billion, around the time of UMG’s listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. He has since trimmed that position, raising around $1.4 billion from the sale of a 2.7 per cent stake in March 2025, and resigned from UMG’s board in May 2025, citing new executive and board obligations arising from recent investments.
His diagnosis of UMG’s troubles is blunt. The company’s stock has fallen around 33 per cent over the past twelve months on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, and Ackman lays out six reasons why. These include uncertainty around the Bolloré Group’s 18 per cent stake in the company, the postponement of UMG’s US listing, the underutilisation of UMG’s balance sheet, the absence of a publicly disclosed capital allocation plan and earnings algorithm, a failure to reflect UMG’s 2.7 billion euro stake in Spotify in its valuation, and what Ackman calls suboptimal shareholder investor relations, communications and engagement.
The Bolloré stake has long cast a shadow over the company. Cyrille Bolloré stepped down from UMG’s board in July 2025 as the Bolloré Group battled the French financial markets regulator over its stake in Vivendi, which holds a further capital interest in UMG. UMG had confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2025 for a proposed secondary listing in America, but put those plans on hold in March 2026, citing market conditions.
Ackman has kind words for UMG’s management, at least. “Since UMG’s listing, Lucian Grainge and the company’s management have done an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance,” he said. But he made his diagnosis plain: “UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”
In other words, Ackman believes UMG is a great business trapped inside a broken structure. If the board agrees, he intends to fix that, loudly and in New York.
