Half of Fourth Torrente installment released in 3D

The Torrente formula isn't quite mathematical, but very nearly. Beyond the fact that this is the fourth installment in the comedy film series about portly, balding, mustachioed, Atlético Madrid-loving, fascist ex-cop José Luis Torrente, and it's in 3D, the figures surrounding it are adding to the pressure. And a large part of the promotion its director and star Santiago Segura is doing for the film is to do with these numbers.

Today, 666 copies of Torrente 4: Lethal Crisis are released on 855 screens (Spain has a total of 3,874 screens), a record for a Spanish film. Of these copies, 55 percent are in 3D. Everything around Segura is epic: from the number of journalists at Wednesday's press conference and screening (just over 200), to the number of interviews he's given (after the 95 done previously, he met 44 groups, as well as had individual chats on Wednesday). At that night's Madrid premiere there were 1,368 guests.

"I believe in taking care of everything, up to the poster. Nothing sells itself, not even Coca-Cola, and we must go out looking for the audience, which is everywhere," the showman said, still smiling at the end of the day. "I work my ass off, and I do it because I have a good film behind it. If I had made a Godzilla-type film, it wouldn't be worth it. People aren't stupid; they know what they want and they wouldn't see the Torrente films if they were bad. Three million saw the first one; the second, 5.5 million and the third, 3.5 million. Have no doubt, I won't stop looking at the box-office figures over the weekend. The internet is there but I still like movie theaters, and we have to better ourselves to bring the audience to the cinema, to invent new things."

Torrente 4, which cost 10 million, is the first Spanish comedy in 3D, the first film in which you'll see... well, best not ruin the gags, which are fairly risqué for a film classified as suitable for ages 12 and over. "Torrente gives you the opportunity to laugh about things that annoy us in real life. On the screen it becomes cathartic: he is not a hero, but an idiot and it makes me laugh when people don't realize that fact, like when they tell me my characters are chauvinists. But look how these characters are! They're pariahs! How can you think of them as role models?"

To one side in the hotel where the film is being promoted, the other actors, Yon González and Kiko Rivera, are also doing press. Rivera, after gracefully struggling with questions about his mother - the singer Isabel Pantoja, who is currently embroiled in a high-profile corruption court case - is given time for a mid-afternoon nap, but Segura carries on. Rushing off, he gives a couple of off-the-record comments to a group of journalists. "My nerves are with the public. We adore Torrente like we adore Homer Simpson... but would you let him into your home?"

Before finishing, he has some photos taken with the hotel waiters, while thrusting his chest out in his Torrente 4 t-shirt; that accessory so fundamental to a Segura movie. In fact, there's even a figure for that: number of t-shirts printed for the new Torrente film: 1,000.