Former spouses and Hollywood top stars Brad Pitt (62) and Angelina Jolie (51) are still embroiled in a mudslinging legal battle, and the French winery they once co-owned is facing the threat of being completely destroyed by a massive wildfire. The family of actor George Clooney, who lived nearby, was also forced to evacuate in an emergency.
On the 1st (local time), according to foreign media including the Daily Mail, a massive wildfire spread as far as the area near Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's winery in Corens in southeastern France, Chateau Miraval, triggering an emergency.
Photos from the scene posted on social media show a shocking sight of the sky directly above Chateau Miraval's vast vineyards filled with thick brown smoke. Firefighters are reported to be fighting desperately, even using the water from a private lake on the winery grounds for firefighting efforts.
The wildfire that has swept across Europe also prompted the neighboring George Clooney and his wife to evacuate. Close friend George Clooney evacuated from his home in Brignoles, near Corens, with his wife Amal Clooney and their 9-year-old twin children. In a letter to the mayor, George Clooney said he hoped the town would remain safe and promised to help the community no matter what happened, conveying the urgency of the situation.
This winery, now struck by a natural disaster, is also a focal point of Pitt and Jolie's bitter divorce litigation. Chateau Miraval, which the two purchased together in 2012, is a massive asset valued at $164 million (about 220 billion won). It was also the symbolic site where they held a private wedding in 2014.
The two's "winery war" began in 2022 when Pitt filed a lawsuit against Jolie. Pitt alleges that although they had agreed not to sell their stakes to a third party without each other's consent, Jolie secretly sold her stake to Stoli Group, led by Russian billionaire Yuri Shefler. Jolie's side, however, insists no such agreement existed and says she arranged her stake to achieve complete "financial independence" from her ex-husband.
Recently, Pitt won a legal victory by obtaining the court's permission to question senior Stoli Group executives as witnesses in London, England. A close associate of Pitt said, "Jolie, out of retaliation after the custody dispute, transferred stakes to people Pitt dislikes," and added, "The trial will transparently reveal what deals took place behind the scenes." Jolie's lawyer responded, "This decision has no impact on the substantive outcome of the trial," and said, "We hope to win at next year's trial so the family can finally heal and move forward."
The two, who have continued a protracted divorce battle for eight years since their split in 2016, are scheduled to begin the full trial on Feb. 1 next year. As the unprecedented wildfire crisis erupted just months before the trial, global attention is focused on whether Chateau Miraval, valued at 220 billion won, can survive intact amid news of George Clooney's emergency evacuation.
Meanwhile, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have six children: Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, and twins Knox and Vivienne. Recently, Pitt was deeply hurt when his children, including his biological daughter Vivienne, sequentially removed their father's surname and took their mother Jolie's surname.
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