'FINAL PLEASE GOD': Drishyam: The Conclusion writer on rewriting the film 100 times

Dubai: The screenwriter behind Drishyam: The Conclusion has revealed he lost count of how many times he rewrote the film. He also said friends, family and even members of the cast and crew tried to bribe him for the ending.

Aamil Keeyan Khan, who co-wrote the third and final Hindi Drishyam film with director Abhishek Pathak and Parveez Shaikh, spoke to the Free Press Journal as the Ajay Devgn thriller crossed Rs272.8 crore (Rs2.73 billion, about Dh112 million) worldwide in its first three days.

'FINAL', 'FINAL 2' and 'FINAL PLEASE GOD'

Asked how many rewrites the script went through, Khan described a laptop full of drafts.

"I have folders inside folders, drafts with dates, numbers, dates after numbers, and files called things like 'FINAL', 'FINAL 2', 'FINAL FINAL' and presumably 'FINAL PLEASE GOD'. I have genuinely lost count, but well over a hundred drafts in different forms. Easily," he said.

Unlike the first two Hindi films, which were remakes of Jeethu Joseph's Malayalam originals, Drishyam: The Conclusionhas an original story. Khan said that made the job harder.

"It was an enormous mountain to climb. You have a beloved franchise, a family that the audiences have lived with for years, and the legacy of two hugely loved films sitting on your shoulders. And most importantly, how do you surprise an audience for the third time?"

Writing for an audience that knows Vijay's tricks

Part of the challenge, Khan explained, was that audiences now know exactly what Vijay Salgaonkar, Devgn's character, is capable of.

"In the first film, Vijay Salgaonkar is almost a blank slate. Now the audience knows him. They know how his mind works; they know he has tricks up his sleeve, and frankly, they're suspicious of everything the poor man does," he said.

The script also had to keep the franchise's identity while telling a new story.

"Then there was the challenge of writing an original screenplay while retaining the DNA of 'Drishyam'. It still had to have humour, family, emotion, drama and thrills without any one ingredient swallowing the others. It was a very, very thin tightrope. Thankfully, none of us looked down."

A climax on a need-to-know basis

Keeping the twists secret was taken seriously on set. According to Khan, most of the cast and crew were never told how the film ends.

"Abhishek basically ran the production like Vijay Salgaonkar would. The climax wasn't given to a large part of the crew. People got information on a need-to-know basis," he said.

"Sometimes a department only knew what it needed to execute a scene, not necessarily why it was executing it."

That secrecy made him a target. "A lot of actors and crew from the film, and my own friends and relatives, tried to bribe me for the ending. But like Gaitonde, I remained honest and loyal to the producers," Khan joked, referring to the police officer played by Kamlesh Sawant across the franchise.

A franchise that keeps growing

Khan made his screenwriting debut with Drishyam 2 in 2022, which he co-wrote with Pathak. He has since written several other Ajay Devgn films, including Shaitaan.

The first Hindi Drishyam made around Rs110 crore worldwide in 2015, and Drishyam 2 went on to gross about Rs345 crore. Drishyam: The Conclusion, released on October 2, has already passed the first film's lifetime total.

Produced by Star Studio18 and Panorama Studios, the film stars Devgn, Tabu, Shriya Saran, Prakash Raj and Jaideep Ahlawat.