For those bearing witness to Brad Pitt’s F1 press tour, it’s easy to forget that the man parading down red carpets in silk shirts talking about race car driving is facing serious legal issues. Behind the smiles and the aviator sunglasses is someone taking his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie, to court over the rightful ownership of her stake in their French winery, Chateau Miraval.

The couple bought the Provence estate in 2008 as a place to raise their children and enjoy the fruits of their labour, however things turned sour eight years later when a tumultuous family plane journey from France to LA prompted Jolie to file for divorce. In 2021, Jolie sold her 50% shares of the estate to the Stoli Group, which Pitt claims she did without permission, however Jolie alleges she tried to sell to Pitt first but refused after he asked her to sign an ‘expansive’ NDA.

Pitt is suing Jolie for $67 million (£49m) plus punitive damages and Jolie’s former investment company Nouvel is countersuing for $250 million (£185m), claiming Pitt launched a campaign to ‘seize control’ of their winery ‘in retaliation for the divorce and custody proceedings’ to ensure she would ‘never see a dime’. The case will head to trial in 2026, but there are new developments on a regular basis as both teams attempt to iron out their cases.

In the latest twist, Pitt filed a motion in court to obtain Jolie’s private messages between her and Alexei Oliynik of Stoli Group. His legal team also wants Jolie to sit for a deposition. The F1 actor says he tried to ‘meet and confer’ with Oliynik, but the Swiss businessman was unwilling to travel to California for a deposition. For that reason, or so Pitt argues, he needs access to his ex-wife’s text messages. Pitt alleges Oliynik was ‘acting at the discretion of his boss, Stoli chief Yuri Shefler’ as the ‘key operative’ behind the purchase, making him ‘unquestionably one of this lawsuit’s most important witnesses’.

A source familiar with the saga told Page Six Pitt’s latest filing is ‘not just about Alexei [Oliynik], it’s about Stoli [Group] as a whole’. While a second source added, ‘Stoli has consistently chosen to avoid or challenge evidentiary court rulings. They’ve been failing to comply with the typical legal process.’ The judge has not yet ruled on Pitt’s motion.

Last December, the judge ruled that Pitt must disclose the documents that Jolie’s lawyer claims will prove ‘communications concerning abuse, lies to authorities, and years of cover up’ on Pitt’s part. Pitt sought for Jolie’s motion to be denied, calling the request ‘wide ranging and intrusive’ as well as a ‘sensationalist fishing expedition’, but the judge ruled in Jolie’s favour.

While the Chateau Miraval dispute is ongoing, it is far from the only legal drama Jolie and Pitt have faced in recent years. Last December, their divorce was finalised after eight years’ back and forth over the custody of their assets and their minor children. In May, Pitt downplayed the divorce as ‘not that major of a thing’ in an interview with GQ. He said it was ‘just something coming to fruition, legally’.

However, anyone who has followed their relationship from its origins on the set of Mr & Mrs Smith in 2005 to its demise in 2016 might think otherwise. They were together for nine years before they got married in 2014 and have six children together – Maddox, 23, Pax, 21, Zahara, 20, Shiloh, 19, Knox and Vivienne, 16 – during which time they were widely touted as a Hollywood power couple. However, during the aforementioned plane journey from France to LA in 2016, Jolie alleges that Pitt drunkenly attacked her and their children, which forced her to file for divorce. Pitt denies the allegations.

The divorce might have finally ‘come to fruition’, but the uglier details of their marriage are likely to play out in court next year. Whether via the documents Jolie’s team are hoping to sift through to prove that Pitt was abusive, or the correspondence between Jolie and the Stoli Group regarding the legitimacy of the sale, the trial is guaranteed to unearth a darker side to their relationship. Then there’s the fact there is $350 million (£257m) at stake.

However, Jolie’s lawyers have always stressed that she never wanted to take the dispute to court. ‘She never pressed charges, she left all their properties, and she is the one who tried to sell him the business in the first place,’ her attorney Paul Murphy said at the end of 2024. ‘To this day, Mr Pitt has never been held accountable for his actions and has at all times controlled Miraval and the winery, yet still he demands more. She wants this to end, the children want this to end, and Mr Pitt should focus on healing their family, not pursuing lawsuits.’

This is another matter which stands in contrast with the image Pitt has been presenting during F1 press junkets – where he proclaimed the importance of surrounding yourself with ‘the people you love, the people that love you back. Friends, family, and that’s it’ – the actor seems to have grown estranged from his children. All six of the Jolie-Pitts have taken a marked stand by Jolie throughout their parents’ legal battles, three of which have dropped ‘Pitt’ from their surnames. Pitt can do all the heavy-handed PR he likes on the red carpet, but his personal relationships tell a different story.

It’s a sorry state of affairs. Whatever happens in court, this is a very different family to the one that used to spend long, happy summers visiting their 990-acre estate in Provence. The question is whether it will all be worth it.