I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately but half of Hollywood is pregnant is the other half has just had babies. On magazine covers everywhere the strategically placed pose of the husband, mom and new baby has become as common of a cover story as a Britney Spears’ meltdown.
For the past couple of years, gossip magazines have been waging a bidding war for exclusive rights to publish the babies’ first public photos. Fueled by competition and bragging rights, magazines like US Weekly and People will pay millions of dollars for the rights even when the issue sells only a fraction of that investment.
According to Vanity Fair magazine, People paid $4.1 million for newborn photos of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt in 2006. International rights for that one set of pictures earned about $10 million, making it the most expensive celebrity image of all time.
People.com set a new single-day traffic record of 26.5 million page views. Just to put that into perspective, Us Weekly cites that they receive about 2 million unique hits per month.
Recently the bidding war reached a staggering new high. $4.1 million? That’s chump change. Jolie is pregnant with twins and the reported amount for the first photos is $12 million in the US alone.
So, by these standards, becoming pregnant in Hollywood has become more profitable than actually getting a role. Jolie was only paid $8 million for her 2007 film Beowulf. If the Jolie-Pitt’s hadn’t donated all the picture money to charity I would say that this might be why she has six kids.