[Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong expend their precious few remaining brain cells for the cameras at last night's Stony Awards sponsored by High Times. Image via Getty]

The successful Cheech and Chong reunion tour has found precisely the messiah you'd expect to bring the pot-culture icons to the wider audience that slipped away from them almost 30 years ago: The Weinstein Company. Harvey and Bob today announced they are clearing space on their cluttered basement shelf for The Cheech and Chong Concert Movie, which the brothers acquired for worldwide theatrical, DVD and TV release in 2009. And the really funny thing? This may turn out to be their most profitable release of the year.And not just because TWC picked it up for roughly $500 and a tank of gas to San Diego, where the film will shoot next March. That won't hurt, but compared to the rest of the Weinstein slate — most notably the high-end gambles Inglourious Basterds [sic] and Nine— the The Cheech and Chong Concert Movie is the only place the Weinsteins make money these days: Cheaply acquired genre-cult junk. And we mean that as a good thing; the comedians' manager told Variety that the tour has "already grossed in eight figures, and a licensing deal has netted roughly $9 per concertgoer" — rock concert numbers, not 70-year-old burnout numbers. Roll that over to the DVD/cable/streaming markets where both the audience that pushed them to equally strong numbers in the '70s and '80s and their stoner kids are watching? Back up the Brinks truck! Who needs Fergie's labia, anyway?

Seth Rogen's recent mellow-harshing bust notwithstanding, there has arguably never been a better time to be a pot aficionado in the movies. Or at the movies. Or returning to the movies — or to the road, anyway, as evinced by new reports of Cheech and Chong's cannabis comeback. Basically anyone who can approximate stoner bliss is ready for prime time these days, from the principals of Harold and Kumar to Pineapple Express to Smiley Face (to say nothing of Hall of Famers The Big Lebowski and Up in Smoke), notes a pot-film scholar who miraculously focused long enough to taxonomize and rate them: