Brad Pitt holds up a knife in Inglourious Basterds.
Francois Duhamel/The Weinstein Company

Brad Pitt — more specifically, Weird Brad Pitt — is one of several winners after this weekend's good showing for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

There wasn't a whole lot opening this weekend: the big story was Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (spell-checkers around the world will be so pleased when it passes into history), with kids' movie Shorts and the comedy Post Grad both far more modestly promoted and discussed.

And that's just about the way it played out. While Shorts and Post Grad didn't do much business (the latter far less even than the former), Inglourious Basterds went smashingly well with a take of more than $37 million domestically.

Now, opening weekend box office is good for only what it's good for — it contributes a great deal to the perception that things are successful, even though a lot can change once you find out whether something has any kind of legs or not. But in this case, the performance of Basterds is big news because of the volatile reputations of Tarantino as well as Bob and Harvey Weinstein, whose company released the movie. (The recent New York Times profile of the Weinsteins is a good read if you haven't already seen it.)

There was a lot of talk last week leading into the weekend about how badly the Weinsteins needed the film to perform well — Tarantino says in the Times that they wanted a hit more than he did — so you can imagine their relief.

So it's a win for them (and for the likelihood that you will soon be watching The Reader 2: The Bubble Bath), and for Tarantino, and for Weird Brad Pitt.