Whoa, did you know that Angelina does not employ a PR person or an agent in her entire staff, so that when it came time to do that People cover spread with her brood, she negotiated the terms herself? And that those pictures sold for more money than any other baby cover in existence?
That's like deciding against an attorney when you are up for the death penalty, and walking away scot-free, with an extra $14 million and a promise that everything written about you in the future had to be positive.
O.J. would have been so lucky.
Is it October already? Only asking because it seems like only days ago Angelina Jolie was selling her twin baby pictures to the highest bidder (People, fyi) and the rumors are already swirling that the couple are looking into acquiring more assets. Baby ass-ets:
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Puerto Rican crooner Ricky Martin just got a new gig: daddy.
Martin's press team confirmed today that the 36-year old welcomed two twin boys this week. And, no, he didn't produce them the "old-fashioned way." Why? Well, perhaps because of his rumored homosexuality, which Martin's hairdresser inadvertently revealed last year.
The suddenly reliable (but only when John Edwards is involved) National Enquirer is still on the hunt for more proof that the tabloid was correct in its reporting, although nobody is really arguing otherwise. This time around the mag reveals even more details about John and his alleged mistress, Rielle Hunter — the latter of whom was flown on a $50,000 private jet to the Virgin Islands the day before Edwards' Nightline interview. This vacation was, of course, paid for by John's pals.
Ex-Seventeen editor and Supra Alpha Kitty Atoosa Rubenstein welcomed Angelika McQueen Rubenstein into the world on Friday night. Says Rubenstein of she and husband Ari's new daughter: "My husband had T-shirts made for the whole family for the Labor Day that said 'A Team.'" Because now everybody in the fam shares an "A." They'll all probably have their own blogs on Babble, too.
Nicole Kidman, who will soon be busy promoting her film Australia, opening in November, made the not-unprecedented-but-still-uncommon step of producing an offspring and then not selling photos of it to the tabloids. Her daughter Sunday Rose, with husband Keith Urban, could be worth millions if they worked out a deal with, say, People magazine. But do-gooders that they are, Kidman and Urban won't be engaging in any human trafficking. But of course, public interest remains, and the first decent shots of Sunday are going to net a photographer a tidy sum — so the chase is already on. This has led Kidman to plead with the paparazzi to leave her "tiny doll" alone, because she is scared of the flashbulbs. Kidman, of course, is being ridiculous. CONTINUED »
It took exactly one day after the publication of Angelina Jolie's new babies for rumors about Angelina Jolie wanting another child to begin. Supposedly her next one will be adopted. From China. Because they had an earthquake there, and this makes Angelina sad. [FF]
"In that cover photo, it looks like Vivienne Marcheline — clearly the Ashley half of this Olsen-like combo — is sporting a giant grin. She may even be laughing. Hold on. These babies are purported to be a mere 3 weeks old! Parenting magazine says that babies don't smile from exterior stimulation until two to four months — even if said exterior stimulation is the most beautiful pair of humans in the entire world." [Daily Intel]
Remember when Janice Min used to dedicate entire spreads to calling out her competitors for their factual mistakes? Us Weekly's "Faux News" provided us with endless fodder. Often, Min aimed her ire at Bauer's In Touch and Life & Style for their Brangelina baby news. Worth mentioning, then, that In Touch is calling out none other than Us Weekly for its (supposedly) inaccurate Brangelina baby news: "Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are setting the record straight about their newborn babies, Knox and Vivienne. Angelina denies US Weekly's recent report that she underwent fertility treatments. 'If they had been conceived though IVF, we would have been happy to discuss it,' she tells People magazine about the twins, who were born on July 12. 'But we have been fortunate never to have had fertility problems,' she adds."
In case you need a break from Dateline's episode about the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office, point your browser at People.com on Sunday at 7pm for an Internet hug.
The first public photos of Knox and Vivienne Jolie-Pitt have already been taken! And, despite our suggestion to nobody in particular that Brad and Angelina split their newborn twins into two separate photo shoots to really maximize profit potential, the babies were photographed together.
But the babies will be split up in one sense: People magazine has secured North American rights to the photos, while British tabloid Hello!, which sports numerous international editions, will have other worldwide rights.
Sound familiar? That's because People and Hello! teamed up in 2006 to publish Brangelina's other baby, Shiloh.
In the end, the price is pegged somewhere between $11 and $15 million, though that could be off by as much as a multiple of two. And while the price is certainly one for the record books (for now), keep in mind that the price includes two babies; so really, we're talking bargain.
Not that it's any consolation to OK! publisher Richard Desmond. CONTINUED »
Congratulations, People! You've been fingered as the winner in the bidding for Brad Pitt and Angelina's baby twin photos. And while OK!'s Richard Desmond opened up his checkbook to secure the photos, everyone sort of expected you to nab the pictures, since The World's Most Famous Couple has a soft spot for ya. Now that you've been chosen to pay some $15 million (plus or minus $7 million) to the charity of Brangelina's choice, the big remaining industry question is: Will Getty Images "photojournalist" Brent Stirton — who shot Shiloh Jolie-Pitt for People in 2006 — get the Knox and Vivienne assignment? It's the boring question that shows we, just like a tabloid, we can drag out a single storyline forever!
To the dismay of tabloid editors everywhere, Halle Berry chose not to sell her baby pics to the weeklies and is, instead, giving her four-month old daughter away.
She was spotted showing off wallet pics of Nahla to shoppers in L.A. — photogs snapped pictures of the pictures — and TMZ says they're "hearing some paparazzi are pissed, because they wanted the first shot of the kid — a shot that could have gone for millions."
Except, uh, the paps did get the first shots — as recently as Thursday.
Nicole Kidman recently gave birth to a baby girl. Her name is Sunday Rose, and she weighed 6 pounds 7.5 ounces. Not even two weeks since giving birth, Ms. Kidman has, according to on lookers, already lost all of her baby weight. "No sign of a baby bump," declares Britain's Daily Mail. Except, given that Kidman never looked more than five months pregnant the entire term, it's natural that she would return to a slim-ish figure quite quickly. As for that disappearing baby bump? The Daily Mail is blind.
As if we haven't already dissected the science of tabloidss reporting on the sex of celebrities' babies, Star gives us another reason to do so, claiming Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson are expecting a girl. This, according to "an insider," which might as well be a coin toss when it comes to having actual knowledge of this sort of thing.
Need we even remind you of Star's track record here? CONTINUED »
OK! is quickly leaving behind the world of celebrity gossip to instead report exclusively on celebrity babies, as seen on the cover of the mag’s latest issue. After the horror of last week’s 80-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears feature, the admittedly beautiful Jessica Alba and baby Honor were a nice welcome this week — until Jess and her dim husband had to open their mouths.
Tabloid television show Entertainment Tonight has decided it will not issue an official retraction of its bungled Angelina Jolie birth report, which wasn't so much an example of the show's bad reporting as it was their producers' decision to turn an anonymous blog report into a full-blown news item. Turns out, there's no reason to! The weeks-early report, which said Jolie gave birth in May, stained the brand's reputation inside the gossip community — but doesn't appear to affected its reputation among viewers. After all, Americans expect even the tabloid news media to get the story wrong. CONTINUED »
The grossly outrageous sum of $20 million has been replaced by the moderately outrageous figure of $12 million — that's supposedly the latest asking price for the pictures of Angelina Jolie's new twins. While one might think People has a lock on the pics, because it's their nature to have a lock on these sort of things, OK!'s Richard Desmond has a trick up his sleeve: He gets to spread the cost around his 17 international editions of OK!. Or maybe Time Inc. will partner up with an international rag, like Hello, and find a clever way of splitting its costs, too.
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Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's decision not to sell pictures of their new daughter Sunday to the highest bidding tabloid has many an editor rankled over a lost opportunity to fork over a few million for the exclusive shots. And plenty of rags were willing to do so.
Kidman and Urban are hopping on the human trafficking is wrong theory, foregoing zeroes on a cheque for their mental well-being. And the good possibility that their daughter will grow up resenting her parents.
The couple reportedly have yet to decide whether they'll release an official photo — which would be a smart move, for their privacy's sake, since without anyone scoring the first photos, they'll be hounded by the paparazzi until someone gets it.
Or they could pull a Gwenyth Paltrow/Chris Martin or Sarah Jessica Parker/Matthew Broderick; both couples decided to alert the paparazzi ahead of time, bring their newborns to a public spot for a few minutes, and let the photogs snap away with equal access. It ensures the photo's value is near worthless, and that they'll be able to leave their homes, with their babies, with just 20 photogs in tow. Not 100.
The case could be made that we've already over-analyzed the over-analyzing of Brad and Angelina's baby twins as we tried to find the winners and the losers in previous nine months of baby speculation. But we did some digging through our tabloid archives and found a few shining stars among the blight, where some celebrity weeklies fared better in their guessing game — is she having a boy? a girl? twins? two girls? — than others.
It's not an exhaustive examination of every Brangelina-related baby cover of the past year, which would show that every tabloid got some info right and wrong at some point. But treat it as evidence that plenty of folks didn't really know what they were doing, and that "inside sources" could often be replaced by "magic 8-balls" or "Crazy Aunt Zelda." CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
