The sexypex trio of Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, and Javier Bardem in Vicky Cristina Barcelona attracted $3.7m worth of ticket buyers over the weekend, making it Woody Allen's second-highest opening weekend in the aughts. What this means for the struggling Weinstein Company, who released the film with MGM, remains to be seen.

The threesomes-in-Spain romantic comedy opened on 692 screens and had the second best per-screen average over the Friday-Sunday period, which could bode well for a wider release. Though so far it's not exactly the barnstorm counter-programming hit that the Weinsteins might have hoped for, perhaps because of Woody Allen's waning pedigree. This was the post-Miramax-fallout studio's biggest release in the past few months, and one wonders why they gave such prominence to Allen, whose career box office average is about $12m, though his biggest hits by far were all the way back in the 70's. Maybe if the film actually delivered on that teased-at threesome, more horndogs in cineastes' clothing would have trenchcoated it over to the multiplex. We'll have to wait for next weekend to see if people are still curious, or if the diehard Johanssonphiles already got all their jibblies.

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