Getty photographer Brent Stirton just won the 2008 Visa d'Or Award for Feature photography for his acclaimed project on the slaughter of gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Maybe you've seen those photos, maybe you haven't. (We say: Make the effort.)
But there's another set of photos you've certainly spied: the People magazine pictures of Brangelina and their kids. Having shot Shiloh in 2006 and Knox and Vivienne this year (though uncredited), Stirton may have raised more cash ($20-plus million) and awareness for charity with his celebrity puff projects than the serious photojournalism he's made a career out of. CONTINUED »
Throw in another hundred thousand copies, and you end up with 2.6 million newsstand copies sold — up from the original 2.5m estimate — of People's cover of Brangelina babies Knox and Vivienne. Originally labeled a "disappointment" by some, the issue is actually the best-selling edition of People in seven years, and its fourth-best newsstand performer in the mag's 35-year history — "behind the Sept. 11 issue (4.1 million single copies), the issue covering Princess Diana’s death (3 million) and the one covering the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. (2.8 million)."
Though the issue sold 1.1m copies more than the 1.5 million People usually does at the newsstand, there's zero chance the tabloid recouped its share of the $14 million photo payment. Helping the situation, though, is the extended amount of time the issue was on newsstands (it was released two days early and will stay on newsstands for an eventual three weeks); the 50-cent jacked up cover price of $4.49; and your stupid willingness to pay to see babies that are not your own.
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 »
When People teamed up with Britain's Hello! to offer a joint bid on Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby twins, splitting the $14 million fee (that's $3.5m per twin per mag), the U.S. tabloid secured North American rights to the pics, while Hello! would get to print the photos in the rest of the world. One might've thought this would be an even deal, with shots from last week's photo shoot spread evenly between the tabloids. That wasn't the case, according to Jolie Expert and LAT blogger Elizabeth Snead: "Hello's cover shot is even cuter, more intimate and personal than People's." Did Larry Hackett got robbed?
Rushing to put its Bragenlina twins cover on the newsstands, People has come up with this: An exhausted Angelina Jolie in her grandmother's nightie; a middle-aged Brad Pitt sporting a salt-and-pepper beard and crow's feet; biological daughter and pristine human being Shiloh holding new sister Vivienne; a tucked-away newborn Vivienne; a shielded view of son Knox; and not a peep from those adopted kids — that's what the inside pages are for. [People]
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!
Angelina Jolie. Christina Aguilera. Jessica Alba. Jamie Lynn Spears. Matthew McConaughey. These are all boobs who have sold their baby photos to the highest bidder, making the action of Reproducing While A Celebrity a very profitable business venture. And while money (from $1-15 million) may be the motivating factor in all these cases human trafficking, surely there must be some way to distinguish the types of celebrities who turn their children in revenue generating commodities, yes? Well, somebody is trying to make the case.
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.
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.
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.
Sorry. No. Absolutely not.
The photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's new kids, Knox and Vivienne, will not be sold with a price tag as high as $20 million, as some outlets are reporting. Sure, "in the celebrity world, it seems to be the double-second coming," as Darryn Lyons, owner of paparazzi agency Big Pictures, tells it. But the fee that either People or OK! hands over, while enormous, will not even come close to the figures being reported. CONTINUED »
The birth of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's new twins — son Knox Leon and daughter Vivienne Marcheline — is not just the second coming of Jesus, but also the culmination of nine months (longer if you count the speculation period) of a gossip industry frenzy, where celebrity weeklies flew off the shelves with breathless reports about Brangelina's coming spawn, tabloid entertainment shows drew ratings with each new "bump" report, and the gossip blogs recorded traffic spikes anytime they pasted their pages with Brangelina rants and raves. Everybody had an opinion. Everybody was a spectator. And everybody wanted in.
So now that Angelina finally gave birth, via C-section, in Nice, France, the matter of her pregnancy is all over with. And before we even get to figuring out which tabloid is spending the GDP of some small nations on scoring the first exclusive pictures of Knox and Vivienne (we suggest they split the two up, and sell each kid to separate magazines), there's another matter to clear up.
Namely, who actually was on their game with this Brangelina birthing business, and which media outlets were merely along for the ride, picking up the crumbs while others trailblazed the way with either a roster of excellent sources or, equally as plausible, very lucky guesses.
After all, if the biggest mystery is the sex of the twins, there's a 1-in-4 chance of getting it right. CONTINUED »
Jessica Alba and Cash Warren have reportedly joined Matthew McConaughey in selling her daughter Honor Marie's pics to OK!. While McConaughey supposedly scored a $3 million deal, which included his son's first photos plus his first Christmas, Alba secured just half that — $1.5 million for pics of the baby now and an upcoming holiday. Not that Alba's reduced fee should be any surprise.
While McConaughey is pulling in $12 million per movie, Alba's quote is a much more modest $2 million.
The endless race for the latest set of exclusive celebrity photos wraps another round, with OK! reportedly snapping up the first pictures of Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves' son Levi Alves, adding to this week's long-expected coup of Jamie Lynn Spears' new daughter Maddie. Of course, this is just a small battle compared to the People v. OK! bidding war for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's new bundle of paydays.
Update: The price for the pics? Three million dollars, says TMZ, with the deal including the baby's first Christmas pics too and the option to bid first on their weddings photos should they tie the knot.
Tom and Katie. Uh huh. Nicole and Keith. Uh huh, uh huh. Madonna and Guy. Yep, uh huh, but where's … ohh, there she is! It's Ms. Jamie Lynn Spears, American's latest teenager mother, at last popping out her daughter and making good on the $1 million deal she inked with OK! for the first exclusive photos and interview with the new mom and Maddie. That we are now celebrating and rewarding young, unwed women having children is an absolute delight to see on today's newsstand. On the plus side, the kid looks nothing like big sis Britney, so she's already got one leg up in the world. [OK!]
JOSSIP REPORTS
Ellen DeGeneres does some things conventionally (launch a mega-hit daytime talk show) and some things unconventionally (announce she's gay on her own sitcom). Thanks to California's OK-ing of gay marriage, she's about to do something else quite conventional: get married, to partner Portia de Rossi.
But here's the unconventional part: She won't be selling the pics, Jossip hears.
While plenty of magazines would love to get their hands on the exclusive pics of her big day – since it'll really be the first celebrity wedding of its kind, with that whole gay thing – most of them will find themselves in another situation: with pics, but without exclusivity. That's because the talk show host plans to distribute multiple sets of pics a single photo to scores of media outlets, we're told, while avoiding certain places she's at odds with (among them, American Media's titles) (a well-placed insider says the photo will be available to everyone who asks).
DeGeneres is said to be one of very few celebs who refuses to accept payouts from the media in exchange for access. And especially with the wedding, she wants to get as much exposure for it as possible, which would help normalize the idea of gay marriage, which she's spoken endlessly about on her show. The more press with the photos, the more blanket the coverage. (Though without giving any magazine exclusive shots, she may lose out on major play on the covers.)
But one fear remains: CONTINUED »
The week began with reports that bidding on Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby twin photos was skyrocketing past a $15 million mark; today brings word the final sum could hit $22 million, as the tabloids feed the human trafficking frenzy. (What's an ultrasound worth?)
No matter that the two magazines still in the bidding for the photos, People and OK!, claim those figures are wildly out of touch with the actual dollar amounts being tossed around.
But make no mistake: This sale is on track to break all previous records, including the estimated $7 million Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony scored for selling U.S. and European rights to their twins.
As for who's going to end up on top, the smart money is on CONTINUED »
Only People and OK! are the remaining contenders. And, joke of all jokes, the proceeds will supposedly go to charity. [TMZ] Time to, once again, revisit the economics of paying ridiculous sums for these type of photos.
Editorial Director
