Drishyam 3 nears Rs 5 billion; director Abhishek Pathak says ‘we never picked up anything’ from Mohanlal’s version

Drishyam: The Conclusion is closing in on Rs 5 billion at the worldwide box office. It has already crossed Rs 3.15 billion India and earned more than Rs 60 crore in its second weekend alone. Despite those numbers, the film’s director and producer says the story of Vijay Salgaonkar is finished.

Speculation about a fourth film began last week after lead actor Ajay Devgn called the threequel the end of the franchise but added a teasing “…for now.” Fans took that as a hint that the Hindi series might follow the Malayalam original into a fourth instalment. Speaking to SCREEN, Abhishek Pathak shut that down: Drishyam 4 is not in the works, not even remotely. He called it a 'poetic ending' and said that the franchise would have to end somewhere.

He described the climax as “a love letter to the franchise.” The finale deliberately calls back to the 2015 original, directed by the late Nishikant Kamat, where cinema served as the only real education for Salgaonkar, a man who left school after Class 4. Pathak hopes fans will keep marking October 2, the date at the centre of the franchise’s plot, as “Drishyam Day.”

Charting its own course

The Hindi film has also outperformed Jeetu Joseph’s Malayalam Drishyam 3, released earlier this year. Mohanlal, who plays Georgekutty in that series, has praised the way the Hindi version ends.

Devgn had previously said the two teams swapped drafts before taking different routes. Pathak, however, told SCREEN that he had worked out his storyline before Joseph had his, so the Malayalam film didn't influence his version. "So, there was no question of comparison of what would work and what wouldn’t. We never picked up anything from that film,” Pathak maintains.

Pathak, who also directed Drishyam 2 in 2022, says the response to that film gave him the confidence to chart a different course this time. “We just saw what people reacted to after the second part released, and decided to build on that. We wanted to stick to the genre of a thriller instead of going in a completely different direction, which is what the other filmmaker did."

The Malayalam instalment leans into family drama. Georgekutty confronts the moral cost of his choices, including consequences that physically harm his daughter. Pathak, who also directed Drishyam 2 in 2022, chose instead to keep the series a thriller, guided by how audiences responded to the second film.