Brangelina Babies: Pop Culture Goes Ballistic [Top Five Photos]
The multimillion-dollar world of celebrity baby
photoshoots was yesterday braced for a record payout
after the birth of twins to the Hollywood actors
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The babies were reported
to be worth at least $11m (£5.5m) for posing in nappies
Pictures of Angelina Jolie's newborn twins, Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline, could have sold for a record $15 to $20 million, photographers tell The Associated Press.Angelina delivered the twins Saturday night via Caesarean section at a hospital in France.
According to the AP, a French newspaper, the Nice Matin, is reporting that the debut photos have already been sold to an undisclosed U.S. publication and that the money will go to a charity of the couple's choice.
Forbes magazine estimated that the top prices paid for star baby pics went to Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony earlier this year for a cover shoot of twins Max and Emme.
The price tag was a reported $6 million. Before that, pics of Brad and Angelina's previous little bundle of joy, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, reportedly went for $4 million in 2006, with the money going to charity.
$11m Babies [Source]
The multimillion-dollar world of celebrity baby photoshoots was yesterday braced for a record payout after the birth of twins to the Hollywood actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
Within hours of their birth on the French Riviera on Saturday night, Vivienne Marcheline and her brother Knox Leon Jolie-Pitt were reported to be worth at least $11m (£5.5m) for posing in nappies.
Jolie and Pitt, who now have six children under the age of seven, were reported to have arranged the same type of transaction undertaken with their daughter Shiloh Nouvel, two.
Two weeks after she was born in Namibia in 2006, her first photoshoot was auctioned to People magazine in the US and Hello! in Britain, in an arrangement estimated to be worth up to $10m, breaking all previous records. The couple donated the fee to charity.
The local paper in Nice, Nice Matin, where the twins were born by caesarian on Saturday night, reported that the couple had sold the rights for the first photo to a US publication for $11m, which would be given to charity. For weeks, American newspapers have speculated on a deal worth $15m. The couple's publicists have not commented.
Picture agencies estimated that the twins could clinch the biggest ever "baby deal", reaching $20m. The only other photos that "would possibly come that close is Britney Spears giving birth to an alien", said Darryn Lyons, owner of the London celebrity photo agency Big Pictures.
The couple, among the highest paid actors in Hollywood, have made million-dollar donations to Médecins Sans Frontières and the International HIV/Aids Alliance, as well as education projects for children in Iraq. Pitt has also supported projects to rebuild housing in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
Magazines bidding for photographs will be keen to avoid any leaks on to celebrity websites, which happened before the Hello! publication in 2006.
Yesterday, paparazzi were camped out near the hospital on Nice's waterfront where Jolie gave birth.
The "Brangelina" family moved to France several months ago in preparation for the birth, setting up home in a 17th-century villa surrounded by forest and vines near the village of Correns in the Var, where bemused villagers have observed the toing and froing of the couple's helicopters.
Jolie, 33, and Pitt, 44, have three adopted children: Maddox, born in Cambodia, Pax, born in Vietnam, and Zahara, born in Ethiopia.
"Everything is fine," Jolie's doctor said after the planned caesarian was brought forward "for medical reasons".