Daddy’s rich and mummy’s good-looking, and the pedigree has already made baby an easy living. ”Brangelina” Jolie-Pitt may be just a six-month-old foetus but has already become the most valuable unborn celebrity in history.
The first photograph of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s offspring is set to create an instant ”Million Dollar Baby” with the first image of the child tipped to be the most expensive celebrity picture ever snapped. Unless the screen idols cut a deal themselves to sell or even give the first pictures to the media, celebrity watchers forecast the most diabolical and feverish paparazzi scramble to capture the infant for millions of salacious readers across America and the world.
”I predict the first pictures will be worth a million to a million-and-a-half US dollars,” said Kevin Smith, owner of the Splash news and picture agency in Los Angeles. No single celeb shot has ever come close to that. The most valuable paparazzi pictures to date are those of Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed on a yachting trip 10 days before they died. The set of pictures made more than £3-million in Britain alone, with the single most valuable kissing shot initially fetching £300 000 but making millions since.
Although the Pitt-Jolie product will be the usual wrinkly bundle, the battle royal for its image will spark a global furore among newspapers and magazines.
”The value of Brad and Angie’s baby will make everything that’s come before pale somewhat,” said Smith. ”Here are the two biggest sex symbols in the world who came together in one of the biggest real-life soap operas ever seen, when Pitt left Jennifer Aniston. It’s a bonanza.”
First pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow’s baby, Apple, were worth around $100 000. Then there were Julia Roberts’s twins, Britney Spears’s son, Posh and Becks’s brood, Michael Jackson’s infant swung over the balcony. All have been worth their weight in gold to the celebrity photography industry.
Now, as the world ghoulishly awaits the offspring of oddball Tom Cruise and his ingenue, Katie Holmes, the biggest build-up is for ”Brangelina” when he or she arrives around 2 May. Unless Jolie and Pitt do a deal, the ”bunfight” is likely to veer between absurd and dangerous. ”They will have snappers with $10 000 lenses hanging out of helicopters outside the hospital,” said one LA photographer.
Spears complained that being pursued by lensmen while pregnant forced her to drive too fast and endanger her unborn child. But last month she herself was accused of endangering young Sean when she drove off to avoid photographers with him on her lap.
”I have seen a pap in LA disguise himself as a trash can and shuffle along the street before sitting on a corner,” said Stephen Bender, a publicist with Seventh House PR in New York. ”He would press a pedal inside to open the lid and pop his head up to take pictures. He snapped Paris Hilton that way.”
One of the biggest players in this field used to be Hello! magazine, which paid £1-million for exclusive photography rights at Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas’s wedding — only to be scooped in rival OK! by shaky shots taken by an interloper. But Hello!, OK! and Now face being bid into the shade by the biggest American players, People and Us Weekly.
New York-based Splash photographer Jason Winslow scooped the first picture of Brad and Angelina that proved they were a couple. He was staking out Jolie’s trailer on a film set in Brooklyn and was amazed to see Pitt arrive to visit her — carrying her adopted daughter, Zahara, in his arms and a baby-bottle of milk in the back pocket of his jeans.
”I started shooting, but got tackled by Brad’s bodyguards so the pictures were a bit blurred,” he said. They are thought to have made Splash around $500 000.
The photographer who has snapped Nicole Kidman, Heidi Klum and George Clooney and Britney Spears, among others said paparazzi often bribe chauffeurs and bodyguards or disguise themselves as pizza deliverers to gain access to stars and events and events.
”I strongly recommend that Brad and Angelina orchestrate a deal if they want to avoid complete madness,” said Splash’s Smith. But he would say that, wouldn’t he? – Guardian Unlimited Â