Inside Brad Pitt’s Chateau Miraval Winery & Business Empire

Today we’re talking about Brad Pitt. He’s more than just a pretty face, and he’s got the business and real estate portfolio to prove it. We’ll talk about how much this Ocean’s Eleven’s star’s blockbusters have made, his love of art and his own sculpting works, the latest on his Plan B production company and what’s next after he sold a large stake in the company.

This brings us to the crown jewel of Brad Pitt’s real estate empire, the sprawling 1,200 plus acre Chateau Miraval winery in Correns, France. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie first leased the centuries-old French vineyard in 2008, before deciding to purchase the estate and make it their family home in 2012 for an estimated $60 million. Even though they reportedly split the bill for the property 60/40, with Brad Pitt paying the larger share, he gave Angelina Jolie an additional 10% equity as a wedding  gift to make them even partners, but he included a now controversial right of first refusal to purchase back Angelina Jolie’s shares in Chateau Miraval should they ever decide to divorce.

Chateau Miraval’s villa, which some say is at least as old as the mid-thirteenth century, is its own small city. Surprisingly, the main house is relatively modest in style, but it is definitely not lacking in substance, sporting 35 bedrooms, 2 gyms, a billiards room, a mini-movie theater, an indoor pool, sauna, and jacuzzi. Surrounded by beautiful woodlands and a moat, the outdoor property is a real stunner with extensive gardens, 20 fountains, ancient aqueducts, more outdoor swimming pools, a private pond, an olive grove planted among winding stone terraces, and the Roman-style chapel where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie secretly married on August 14, 2014. 

Then there’s the vineyard. The vineyard had already been a successful wine producing money-maker when they bought Chateau Miraval, which has been the pride of Tom Bove, the American businessman who had bought the property in the 1990’s and went on to make it one of France’s top organic wine producers. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie wanted to carry on with Chateau Miraval’s history of winemaking, and so in 2013 they teamed up with Rhone Valley winery Chateau Beaucastel to launch their own Miraval Wines brand. 

Contents of this video:

00:00 Brad Pitt’s Chateau Miraval Winery, Business & Real Estate Empire
00:32 Brad Pitt's Early Years
01:13 Brad Pitt's Acting Career
04:12 Brad Pitt's Plan B Production Company

Founder/Content Creator:

Chris Thompson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherjthompson/

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Transcript

Welcome to irl Media NEWS. I’m your host Chris Thompson, and today we’re talking about Brad Pitt. He’s more than just a pretty face, and he’s got the business and real estate portfolio to prove it. We’ll talk about how much this Ocean’s Eleven’s star’s blockbusters have made, his love of art and his own sculpting works, the latest on his Plan B production company and what’s next after he sold a large stake in the company, and his real estate portfolio which includes the sprawling Chateau Miraval winery in the South of France.

Background

As a sporty youth from Oklahoma, Brad Pitt majored in journalism at the University of Missouri. Just 2 credits, 1 term paper, and 2 short weeks short of graduation, he had an epiphany regarding what he wanted to do in life – and journalism wasn't it. He made the head scratching decision to quit college and move to California. His parents thought he was going to Pasadena College of Design, but in reality he moved to California to pursue an acting career. With just $275 in his pocket he landed in Los Angeles. For the time being, he had to work odd jobs to make ends meet. He later said in interviews that he regretted dropping out of college, yet his success as an actor has been anything but regrettable.

Acting Career

While his acting career might not have seemed a financial success at first, earning a paltry $6,000 for his first movie role in ‘Thelma & Louise” in 1991, but he drew a lot of interest from female audiences which put him on an upward trajectory. Since his first breakthrough movie he’s been in dozens of movies as a lead actor. Without accounting for movies in which he played supporting roles, the 34 movies in which he had leading roles have earned a total of $5,079,590,654 ($5.07) billion dollars worldwide.

Let’s break down for you some of Brad Pitt’s highest grossing movies worldwide.

Brad Pitt’s highest grossing movie franchise was Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Ocean’s’ franchise movies. Starting with ‘Ocean’s 11’, which made $450.7 million worldwide. For ‘Ocean’s 11’, ‘Ocean’s 12’, and ‘Ocean’s 13’ movies that Brad Pitt appeared in they have brought in a combined $1,125,462,070 billion dollars worldwide. For the first ‘Ocean’s 11’ movie Brad Pitt got paid $30 million dollars for his role as Robert "Rusty" Ryan.

The movie that brought together Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie was the 2005 hit movie ‘Mr & Mrs Smith’, which brought in $487.2 million at the global box office, making it his third most profitable hit. Both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie each got paid $20 million dollars for their roles in ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’.

That brings us to Brad Pitt’s role as the Greek demi-god Achilles in the film ‘Troy’, which took the worldwide box office by storm with gross earnings of $497.40 million dollars. Brad Pitt got paid $17.5 million dollars for his role in ‘Troy’, which is below his usual leading role salary.

And Brad Pitt’s #1 box office movie was the apocalyptic action thriller ‘World War Z’, which crushed box offices around the world when it took in $540.40 million, although Brad Pitt only made a relatively low salary of $11 million dollars for his role. We’ll just chalk that up to irony, that Brad Pitt’s biggest box office hit paid him one of the lowest salaries in his career as a leading actor. 

When it comes to working with movie legend Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt is more than willing to slash his salary requirements during negotiations to lock-in a role in another Tarantino movie. To date, Brad Pitt has appeared in three films by Quentin Tarantino, including the 2009 film "Inglourious Basterds", the 2019 film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", and the upcoming film ‘The Movie Critic’ which is expected to begin filming in mid-2024 with a 2025 release date. This doesn’t even include Brad Pitt’s appearance in the 1993 film "True Romance," which was written by Quentin Tarantino but directed by Tony Scott.

Right now Brad Pitt is busy filming the Formula 1 action movie 'Apex', which is being directed by Joseph Kosinski who’s the genius behind Tom Cruise's box office smash 'Top Gun: Maverick'. Joseph Kosinski is hoping to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time, and with another A-list actor like Brad Pitt who’s getting paid $30 million dollars for the lead role they might just break the box office when the film debuts in 2025.

Plan B

If that whole acting thing doesn’t work out Brad Pitt could always fall back on his Plan B Entertainment company. Started in 2001 with then-wife Jennifer Aniston and movie producer Brad Gray, Brad Pitt invested his own money into the production venture. When he and Aniston parted ways, Brad Pitt kept Plan B in the divorce. Sometime later, Brad Grey also bowed out in favor of a leadership spot with Paramount Pictures, leaving Brad Pitt as the sole shareholder. 

Plan B has had good success churning out Oscar nominated and winning movies, like the award-winning ‘Moonlight’, considered by some to be the best movies of the 21-century, even though it only brought in a modest $65 million dollars at the global box office. The other two Oscar winners produced by Plan B, ‘12 Years a Slave’ and ‘The Departed’, with each earning more than doubling what ‘Moonlight’s’ made at the box office. 

‘12 Years a Slave’ saw its first weekend debut bring in $923,715 from just 19 theaters. Overall it made $187.7 million dollars worldwide, with $56.7 million dollars of that from just the United States box offices. However, out of the three award winners, it was ‘The Departed’ that made the biggest box office splash. It took the number 1 spot at the boxoffice when it debuted in the US, eventually grossing $291.5 million dollars worldwide. 

Not all of Plan B’s financially successful movies were also Oscar winners. Their 2005 version of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ starring Johnny Depp brought in $475.8 million dollars worldwide, second only to ‘World War Z’ starring Brad Pitt which brought in $540.5 million dollars worldwide. 

In Hollywood, not every movie can be a winner. Plan B’s 2010 hopeful ‘She Said’ looked like it could be an Oscar contender, but it’s meh reviews were met with meh sales and the movie only made $13.9 million dollars worldwide. That’s not a problem for Brad Pitt and his Plan B associates who say they value diversity, innovation, and daring over box office numbers when it comes to their creative projects. 

By 2022, Brad Pitt claimed that his boutique production company was “already bulging out of the seams of our little garage”. That led Brad Pitt to sell his majority stake in Plan B, a total of 60% of the company, to French media conglomerate Mediawan. Various sources say the deal was worth north of $300 million dollars, but less than $500 million dollars as has been mentioned in the press. There’s been some reports that Brad Pitt may have earned around $113 million dollars from the sale. One of the upsides to selling his majority equity stake in Plan B to a well financed overseas media company is that allow Plan B to access funding and tax credits that are only available to companies headquartered in Europe. 

Even before the Mediawan deal, Plan B hadn’t limited itself strictly to movies. It’s produced TV shows for Amazon Prime Video and HBO, and more recently it made a foray into podcast projects. Plan B signed an exclusive, multi-project deal with Amazon’s company Audible to create a collection of Audible Originals. 

Art Collection & Art Galleries

It’s great that Brad Pitt has diversified beyond acting, but did you know he’s also an artist and a creative at heart. His love of art led him to purchase 3 Los Angeles art studios from his British art sculptor friend Thomas Houseago in a rundown industrial-turned-hipster part of the Frogtown neighborhood. He bought the first two side-by-side studios for $4,095,000 in 2016, and then in 2021 he bought a vintage manufacturing building in a separate deal for $2,933,500.

Brad Pitt’s journey into the art world didn’t just happen overnight. Not only has he reportedly created some of his own art sculptures, but some of which have appeared at an art gallery in Finland and are up for sale at an undisclosed price. 

He’s also a collector, and has gathered quite a diverse collection from other artists. He owns several pieces by his friend Thomas Houseago, whose sculptures sometimes veer into the macabre and creepy. 

Some of Brad Pitt's other collectables include a black and white photo from Civil Rights Movement photographer Danny Lyon. He spent $110,000 on three pieces made of recyclable materials by rising artist Nacho Carbonell. He snatched up three  pieces from avant garde artist Atelier van Lieshou. Perhaps his most impressive piece is the New Orleans inspired mural that he and Angelina Jolie somehow convinced the enigmatic street artist known as Bansky to create for them. This is rivaled by only one other piece in his collection; the sole painting done by Winston Churchill during WWII.

Brad Pitt’s ever expanding portfolio of businesses, investments, and artworks also extends to the automotive world. His magnificent car collection is estimated to be worth $3.7 million dollars, and includes high end luxury cars like a Lamborghinia Aventador, an Audi R 8, and the venerable Mercedes Benz G Wagon. However, his collection also includes the more practical, everyman vehicles like a Jeep Cherokees, Chevy, Tahoe, and a Camaro SS. 


Real Estate

Art isn’t the only thing Brad Pitt has been busy collecting. Ever since he bought his first $1.7 million dollar mansion in 1994 from Elvira, Mistress of the Dark herself, he’s been scooping up properties left and right. He took that former home of Elvira and turned the Los Feliz mansion into a compound for himself, Jolie, and their 6 kids. The original home was later joined by the two neighboring houses that Pitt bought in 2005, and eventually grew into a 1.9 acre high-security compound that boasted five houses, including the 6,600 square foot 1915 Craftsman classic known as Briarcliff Manor. Another one of the five homes he bought was from an elderly man. Being the good neighbor Brad Pitt is, he allowed the 93 year old to live in the house rent free until he died. Altogether, the compound, which included 3 inground pools, a nanny’s quarters, a secret cave, and a private tennis court, and a skate park, cost Brad Pitt $5 million dollars to assemble over the last 30 years.

That initial $5 million dollar investment is nothing compared to the whopping $33 million dollars he sold the compound for in 2023 when he sold it to oil heiress Aileen Getty, netting Brad Pitt a sweet $28 million dollar profit on his investment. 

And Brad Pitt must be a big fan of irony, because he then turned around and bought Aileen Getty’s old house for a mere $8.3 million dollars. See, celebrities downsize just like the rest of us!

Brad Pitt apparently loves California so much that he bought a beach house located near Gaviota State Park nine miles west of Santa Barbara for $4 million dollars in 2000, and now it’s estimated to be worth close to $20 million dollars. Brad Pitt uses it as a vacation home, and following his divorce from Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt was able to keep the beach-front property.

As if one beach house wasn’t enough for Brad Pitt he also bought another beach-front home, this one in the Carmel Highlands neighborhood near Monterey, California. In 2022 he threw down $40 million dollars in cash to buy author DL James' castle-like cliff home, appropriately named Seaward. 

Brad Pitt’s real estate collection isn’t just confined to California. Over the years he’s bought and sold homes in New Orleans, Berlin, and New York – including an apartment in the city’s iconic art deco hotel, the Waldorf Astoria that he bought with Angelina Jolie. It’s thought that Brad Pitt no longer owns this apartment, and doesn’t have any other properties in NYC.


Chateau Miraval

This brings us to the crown jewel of Brad Pitt’s real estate empire, the sprawling 1,200 plus acre Chateau Miraval winery in Correns, France. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie first leased the centuries-old French vineyard in 2008, before deciding to purchase the estate and make it their family home in 2012 for an estimated $60 million. Even though they reportedly split the bill for the property 60/40, with Brad Pitt paying the larger share, he gave Angelina Jolie an additional 10% equity as a wedding  gift to make them even partners, but he included a now controversial right of first refusal to purchase back Angelina Jolie’s shares in Chateau Miraval should they ever decide to divorce. At that point Chateau Miraval was owned 50/50 via Brad Pitt’s company Mondo Bongo, and Angelina Jolie’s company Nouvel.

Chateau Miraval’s villa, which some say is at least as old as the mid-thirteenth century, is its own small city. Surprisingly, the main house is relatively modest in style, but it is definitely not lacking in substance, sporting 35 bedrooms, 2 gyms, a billiards room, a mini-movie theater, an indoor pool, sauna, and jacuzzi. Surrounded by beautiful woodlands and a moat, the outdoor property is a real stunner with extensive gardens, 20 fountains, ancient aqueducts, more outdoor swimming pools, a private pond, an olive grove planted among winding stone terraces, and the Roman-style chapel where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie secretly married on August 14, 2014. 

Then there’s the vineyard. The vineyard had already been a successful wine producing money-maker when they bought Chateau Miraval, which has been the pride of Tom Bove, the American businessman who had bought the property in the 1990’s and went on to make it one of France’s top organic wine producers. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie wanted to carry on with Chateau Miraval’s history of winemaking, and so in 2013 they teamed up with Rhone Valley winery Chateau Beaucastel to launch their own Miraval Wines brand. 

When they launched their Miraval Wines, their entire stock of 6,000 bottles sold out in just 5 hours. In 2020 the company rolled out its first champagne onto U.S. shelves. That same year, Miraval Wines sold 150,000 cases to U.S markets; a soaring increase of 17.4% over the previous year. 

According to Brad Pitt, even though Angelina Jolie owned a 50% stake in the property, she had no hand in making Miraval a success. According to court documents, Brad Pitt said that he was the one who turned it into a “multi-million dollar global business and one of the world’s most highly regarded producers of rosé wine.” 

By 2023, Chateau Miraval was reportedly worth an estimated $160 million, a staggering $100 million dollar increase in value from when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie first bought it. 

Despite Chateau Miraval’s success, the relationship between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie was over. In 2021 Angelina Jolie sold her 50% stake out of spite to the Stoli subsidiary, Tenute del Mondo, which is owned by the Russian Oligarch Billionaire Yuri Shefler.

This became an issue because, according to Brad Pitt, his company Mondo Bongo legally had a right of first refusal to buy out Angelina Jolie’s stake in Chateau Miraval for $54.5 million. By selling her shares without first informing Brad Pitt and giving him an opportunity to buy her shares, Angelina Jolie broke their contract.

There hasn’t been credible reporting on how much Angelina Jolie actually sold her share of Chateau Miraval winery to Russian Oligarch Billionaire Yuri Shefler for, but the estate is estimated to be valued at an estimated $500 million dollars. 

Brad Pitt hit back at Angelina Jolie for breaking their contract with a $350 million dollar lawsuit against Angelina Jolie’s company Nouvel, on the basis that he had “first right of refusal”, which if true, would make the sale null and void. However, Angelina Jolie has filed a tit-for-tat $350 million dollar lawsuit of her own, alleging that Brad Pitt had frittered away company assets on renovations to the chateau’s swimming pool, stair cases, and recording studio. She described Brad Pitt’s project expenditures as “stripping” and “looting” the company, strong words that a judge apparently did not agree with. 

After $10 million dollars in legal fees, Brad Pitt was recently awarded his 10% share of Chateau Miraval back from Angelina Jolie, after a court in Luxembourg court ruled that their nuptials giving Angelina Jolie the 10% share isn’t enforceable. That 10% share has now been put into a Luxembourg court’s escrow account until the legal matter can be officially decided; something the courts have said could take years.

Regardless of how the legal battles over Chateau Miraval between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie turn out, Brad Pitt’s success is in the numbers. Between his film career, his Plan B production company, his art and car collections, and his real estate holdings, Brad Pitt’s net worth is estimated to be about $400 million dollars. That sounds like a win to me.