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Since 2019, Spanish movie theaters have not had so much attendance in a single weekend. The person responsible: Torrente

March 18, 2026 by usatoday24

‘Torrente Presidente’ arrived in theaters on March 13 without a trailer, without press passes and with a poster with a black background as the only promotional material. In 72 hours it raised close to 7 million euros: with one million viewers, it is the best start for a Spanish film in fifteen years. And these are the causes of the phenomenon. The figures. The first numbers of ‘Torrente Presidente’, before the weekend ended, were already overwhelming and predicted extraordinary success. Premiere on 1077 screens. 150,000 tickets sold in advance. 2.4 million euros and 300,000 spectators on Friday alone. At the end of the weekend, it had generated a total of 6.94 million euros, 70% of the national box office. Of course, it is the weekend with the highest attendance at cinemas since 2019, before the pandemic. The figure places the sixth installment of the saga as the fourth best premiere in the history of Spanish cinema, behind ‘The Impossible’ (€8.9M), ‘Torrente 4: Lethal Crisis’ (€8.6M) and ‘Torrente 3: The Protector’ (€7.21M). It is also the highest-grossing Spanish film of the year and the best debut of a Spanish production in the last eleven: no national film had reached that level of box office on its opening day since at least 2015. Unusual marketing. Segura opted for a launch strategy completely atypical: The film arrived in theaters without a trailer, without promotion and without prior press screenings, announcing itself only with a publication on social networks. The director has explained that his intention was that fans of the saga would be the first to enjoy it. Curiously, Segura has for decades been one of the most active Spanish directors in the promotion machine, continually appearing on television wearing t-shirts with the film’s title. Once ‘Torrente Presidente’ was released, it has already been seen on programs like ‘El Hormiguero’ and has begun to give interviews and give access to press passes. You know what you’re going for. Curiously, Torrente’s films do not stand out for their plot twists or spectacular surprises, but there is another secret to keep: the cameos. As could be seen when the film arrived in theaters, ‘Torrente Presidente’ is one of the densest films in the saga (if not the most) in terms of number of cameos and guest stars. That was what Segura did not want revealed, and that is why there are abundant articles on the internet that they gut this aspect of the movie. It is the great secret of the premiere, above its plot or its approach, where it rains in the wet. And now what. If in a film like this the surprise effect is important, word of mouth is even more important. From its second week onwards, Segura will adhere to the usual rules of the promotion (trailer, poster, pass, interviews) seeking to maintain the momentum. The first milestone that ‘Torrente Presidente’ has to overcome is the 22.1 million in revenue from ‘Torrente 2’, the most lucrative of the saga to date. At this rate, this second week could exceed the 14 million euros that the intermediate installments of the saga accumulated, amounts that the films of ‘Father there is only one‘. In Xataka | There are many people who hate Santiago Segura’s films. The problem is that they “save” Spanish cinema every year

The revenge film that revolutionized the international cinema scene returns to theaters for its anniversary

January 25, 2025 by usatoday24

Of course, Park Chan-wook’s masterpieceOld Boy‘ was not the first Korean film to attract the attention of viewers outside Asia. That same year we had had the fabulous rural thriller ‘Memories of Murder’, by the country’s other star director, Bong Joon Ho. And Park Chan-wook himself had shown the first film of his revenge trilogy, ‘Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance’, at international festivals a year earlier. But ‘Old Boy’ connected in a special way with Western viewers by raising a feeling that has been captured in millions of films of all origins, revengebut with the doses of extravagance and visual daring that we have always expected in Korean cinema since then. ‘Old Boy’ became almost a canonical film of the country, at least for foreign viewers and festivals, since there the commercial cinema that the majority of the population consumes, just like in Europe or the United States, is nothing like it. to this experiment artie but forceful. The convoluted plot of ‘Old Boy’ begins when a Korean businessman is kidnapped and confined for years in a cell where there is only a television. He doesn’t know why he is there and little by little we will witness his slow descent into madness. When he comes out, he will begin a meticulous process of revenge for those who have destroyed his life, violent and with a good amount of extreme revelations. We all remember from ‘Old Boy’ its magnificent scene shot in sequence, of a hallway full of enemies that the protagonist dispatches quickly and with the help of a hammer. It has been imitated in series seemingly as far removed from this film as ‘Daredevil’, demonstrating the extent to which the reach and influence of ‘Old Boy’ make it a unique icon of Korean cinema. Now, on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, we can once again enjoy this film on the big screen, as it is re-released in theaters. In Xataka | Spectators and critics say it is the best science fiction film of recent times, but it was barely seen in theaters

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