The world's costliest baby snaps

7m pounds for the Brangelina twins

With an estimated 7m pounds price tag, the pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's newborn twins that Hello! rushed into print yesterday lay claim to being the world's most expensive baby snaps


By STEPHEN BROOK
Story from The Guardian
(August 5, 2008)


Over 17 glossy pages, Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Leon Jolie-Pitt make their celebrity magazine debut in a deal said to have cost the magazine 3.5m pounds for the international rights.

With US celebrity magazine People estimated to have paid a further 3.5m pounds for the North American and Puerto Rican rights, a new benchmark in chequebook journalism has been set.

The vast popularity of Brangelina - as celebrity magazines dub the two Hollywood stars - across Europe guarantees sales, which may partly explain why Hello! felt it could up its cover price 50p to 2.50 pounds for the special issue, which will remain on sale for a fortnight.

Publication of the Pitt-Jolie twins' pictures will substantially boost the circulation of Hello!, which was an average of 405,615 in the second half of 2007, down 1.7%. Its rival OK! is more than 280,000 issues ahead each week. Richard Desmond's OK! was understood to have dropped out of the bidding at about 3m pounds.

Celebrity agent Max Clifford said: "OK! has had one or two big issues in recent times, including the Rooney wedding, so they had to compete. What they are hoping is that they put on circulation and then they keep some of it ... Hello! really do need to be seen to be bringing in the really big ones from time to time." Hello!, which increased the print run for this week's special issue, declined to comment on what it paid for the Pitt-Jolie pictures. All the money will be donated to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which helps sick and disadvantaged children around the world.

Hello! which started in Spain and has editions in Greece, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, India, Turkey, Greece and Serbia, has already brought in some revenue by selling the pictures to New Idea magazine in Australia. Bosses at Hello! and People are hoping for particularly high sales at airports during the busy holiday period.

While the new pictures, taken by Getty Images, will provide a much-needed circulation fillip, the Vivienne and Knox special edition will not come close to the Hello! all-time bestseller: the issue commemorating Princess Diana's funeral in September 2007 sold 1.1m copies.

Pitt and Jolie established a relationship with Hello! in 2006 when their first child together, Shiloh Nouvel, was born in Namibia, and they sold pictures of her to the magazine, donating the fee to charity. Hello! released its new cover online at 12.01am yesterday morning, trumpeting: "EXCLUSIVE! Brad and Angelina share their beautiful family with us."

The couple's two-year-old child, Shiloh and three adopted children - six-year-old Maddox, from Cambodia; Zahara, three, from Ethiopia, and four-year-old Pax, from Vietnam - are all pictured holding the twins.

In the accompanying interview, conducted at the family's rented estate in Provence, the proud parents explain how they prepared their four older children with an episode of Dora the Explorer to explain the arrival of the twins. In the article they discuss their desire for a large family and also the birth. Pitt says: "I felt an awe that words fail to describe." Clifford said: "They are the two biggest stars as a couple in the world. "Last time they did this it was proven to be successful; since then we have become even more celebrity-obsessed, unfortunately."


(Published: 10.08.2008.)