KIM Kardashian bagged at least $20 million from her infamous sex tape with Ray J – but the raunchiest footage was deleted from the final video, a celebrity porn broker has claimed.
Kevin Blatt, Hollywood’s most notorious sex tape broker, claimed in an exclusive interview with The Sun that he was offered the chance to buy the tape from Ray J in 2006, describing him as “eager” to strike a deal.
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Kim Kardashian and Ray J briefly dated in the early 2000s when Kim was working as a stylist for Brandy Melville, Ray J’s sisterCredit: Getty
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Kevin Blatt claims he was offered the chance to buy their sex tape in 2006Credit: Kevin Blatt
Representatives for Kim Kardashian and Ray J have not yet returned a request for comment, but both stars have routinely denied having any involvement in the video’s release.
Meanwhile Blatt, now 52, said he was informed of the tape’s existence by a childhood friend who was working at Adult Video News at the time.
Though Blatt said he was unaware of who Ray J was, he agreed to meet the rapper – who is the brother of R&B singer Brandy Melville – at a local Cheesecake Factory for lunch to learn more about the contents of the video.
“This little guy pulled up in a Lamborghini and came walking in the restaurant,” Blatt remembered.
Ray J, who Blatt described as “very funny” and sharp, then proceeded to tell him and his friend all about a video he’d captured of a sexual encounter he’d shared with a woman that neither Blatt nor his friend had heard of.
‘BIGGER THAN PARIS’
The woman, it would turn out, was Kim Kardashian, a then-relatively unknown fashion stylist who was close friends with reality TV behemoth Paris Hilton.
Blatt had made his name in the sordid trade of celebrity sex tape brokering two years earlier by facilitating the release of Paris Hilton’s sex tape with Rick Salomon, One Night In Paris.
Kim’s tape, Ray J explained, had been filmed in 2002 when he was on vacation with Kim in Cabo, Mexico, in celebration of her 22nd birthday.
According to Blatt, Ray J allegedly told him that Kim “wanted to release the sex tape for free the weekend before but he had to talk her out of it.”
“Ray J told me, ‘She wants to be bigger than Paris,'” Blatt claimed. “I told him, ‘Ray J, you cannot let her release it for free – don’t let her do that.
“‘There’s too much money out there,” Blatt allegedly continued, “‘I can give you the best deal ever and I’m gonna bring in somebody who’s gonna pay you a million dollars right now.'”
TAPE RELEASE SPARKS FALLOUT
Ray J is alleged to have responded that Blatt’s proposal “sounded good” but he needed to consult with Kim first.
But Blatt said he never heard from Ray J again, and ultimately the video was given by a third party to Vivid Entertainment, an adult film distribution company.
“I was ready to make a deal with him and pay him more money than he’s ever seen but he went behind our back and that’s fine,” Blatt said.
The 41-minute tape was released months later in March 2007 under the title Kim Kardashian: Superstar.
Kim filed a lawsuit against Vivid soon after, accusing the company of releasing the tape without her permission.
She quickly dropped the suit after enlisting the help of Girls Gone Wild creator Joe Francis, a friend of the Kardashian family, who helped acquire her $5 million for the tape’s distribution instead.
KIM CATAPULTED TO STARDOM
Like Hilton before her, Kim’s sex tape went on to make her a huge star.
Around eight months after the video’s release, she and the rest of her family went on to star on their own reality TV series on E!, Keeping Up With The Kardashians – catapulting them to global fame.
Vivid Entertainment founder Steven Hirsch previously revealed that Kim’s sex tape is his company’s “best-selling movie of all time”, and has generated millions of dollars in sales.
“I can only say that it’s the most popular tape we’ve ever done,” he told the NY Post in 2017.
“Revenue-wise it has generated more income than any other tape that we’ve done.”
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Kim was friends with Paris Hilton at the time, but relatively unknown outside of the LA socialite sceneCredit: Getty
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Kim has credited the tape with launching her into superstardom, though she still wishes she could ‘erase’ it from existenceCredit: Instagram
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Ray J has previously denied having any involvement in the tape’s releaseCredit: Getty
While a specific figure has never been disclosed, Blatt, who said he was disappointed to miss out on buying the tape, estimates that Kim alone has likely made in excess of $20 million.
A 2017 report by TMZ affiliate TooFab alleged that Ray J was still reportedly earning $90,000 in royalties every three months.
DELETED SCENES?
Shockingly, Blatt alleges there were a number of X-rated scenes in the version of the sex tape he claims to have watched that were actually deleted from the final video.
Declining to offer specifics, Blatt told The Sun: “What I can tell you is that on the initial tape of Kim Kardashian there was a lot of stuff that was excluded.
“I don’t think the family would’ve been the entity that they are today if a lot of that other stuff had made it onto the final tape.”
He also dispelled claims made by Kim’s ex-husband Kanye West earlier this year, who said he was in possession of a “graphic” and “unreleased” second sex tape involving Kim and Ray J.
Blatt said if any such tape did exist, he has no doubt it would’ve made it across his desk at some point.
‘A COMPLETE SET UP’
Kim Kardashian, and her “momager” Kris Jenner, have always maintained that no one in their family was involved in the leaking of the video. Ray J, too, claims he wasn’t involved.
However, rumors have long swirled that the tape’s release was a calculated move by both Ray J and Kim, as Blatt’s alleged encounter with the rapper would suggest.
In a 2016 tell-all book by Ian Halperin called Kardashian Dynasty, the author claimed the sex tape was “a complete set up to become famous”, and the idea was essentially an attempt to copy Paris Hilton’s ascension to superstardom.
Halperin further claimed that Kim’s lawsuit was “nothing more than an attempt to portray herself as a victim of an unscrupulous thief or Ray J himself.”
Karrine Steffans, a former “Video Vixen” who previously dated Ray J, told Page Six five years ago that the singer believed leaking the sex tape would “bring him wealth and more fame.”
“And he really, really, really, really believed — really in his heart of hearts believed — that this sex tape was going to finally make him white-girl famous,” she said.
“It’s a different kind of famous. White girls can do anything and be famous; a white girl could slip and fall in the middle of Rodeo Drive and all of a sudden she’s a star. Black women can’t do that, and certainly black men can’t do that, and white men can’t do that.”
KIM’S REGRETS
While precisely how the sex tape came to be leaked will likely always raise an eyebrow of suspicion among some, Kim has often spoken publicly about how she wishes she could “erase” the clip.
“That is something that I have to live with for the rest of my life. That is something that’s, like, being held over my head,” Kim said during the reunion episode of Season 20 of Keeping Up With The Kardashians (KUWTK).
“I try not to have any regrets, but it’s probably the one thing that I wish didn’t exist, and if I could erase any of the stupid things that I’ve done in life, that’s probably it. And it’s more so from being a mom than anything.”
While she regretted making the tape, Kim said she believes that KUWTK wouldn’t have been as successful as it is had the film not been leaked.
“Looking back, probably not,” she said. “I think that everything happens for a reason and I really try to live like that.
“Every time there’s a crazy scandal that feels like you can’t breathe and how are you gonna get through this, it always is a lesson.
“Even if it’s a private lesson, or even if it’s just something that we didn’t know we had to go through.”
Blatt voiced admiration for Kim, and Paris Hilton, for outliving the 15 minutes of fame their respective tapes gave them and using the platform to catapult themselves to the upper echelons of stardom.
“A lot of people don’t know that it’s one thing to be rich and another to be famous – but to be rich and famous takes a tremendous amount of skill,” he said.
“It takes more than just a sex tape, you need a tremendous amount of skill to last as long as Paris in this game or Kim – because both became billion-dollar enterprises.”
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Kim is now an incredibly successful businesswoman with a net worth of $1.8 billionCredit: Getty Images – Getty
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Months after the tape leaked, Kim and her family landed their own show on E!, Keeping Up With The KardashiansCredit: Rex
