‘I don’t want to overdo the franchise’: Abhishek Pathak on keeping ‘Drishyam 3’ edgy | Exclusive

Published: October 10, 2026 05:34 PM IST

Ever since ‘Drishyam: The Conclusion’ hit the screens, comparisons between the Hindi thriller and its Malayalam counterpart have been inevitable. With filmmaker Jeethu Joseph and his team having taken the original Malayalam franchise in a direction of their own, director Abhishek Pathak was determined that the Hindi third instalment would not simply retrace the same path.

While the first two Hindi films largely followed the Malayalam originals, Abhishek wanted to give the third chapter a distinct identity without compromising the essence of ‘Drishyam’. For him, the challenge was to retain the suspense, twists and emotional core of the franchise while delivering a fresh cinematic experience.

In an exclusive conversation with Onmanorama, Abhishek, who has also produced the film along with his father Kumar under the banner of Panorama Studios, discusses why he chose not to remake the Malayalam third instalment, the painstaking process of getting the screenplay right, and his decision to bring the franchise to a close.

‘We didn’t want to simply recreate the Malayalam version’
The response to ‘Drishyam: The Conclusion’ has been particularly gratifying for Abhishek, especially the appreciation coming from Kerala, where the franchise originated. “It feels wonderful. I think the collective effort of the entire team over so many years is finally being acknowledged and appreciated. That is a great feeling,” he says.

For Abhishek, the response from Malayali audiences carries special significance. The intention was never to replicate what the Malayalam film had already achieved, but to preserve the spirit of the story while giving it a different treatment. That distinction became central to the making of the third film.

Why the ending had to come first
Abhishek’s decision to give the Hindi third instalment a different treatment was made well before the screenplay took shape. After completing ‘Drishyam 2’, he had decided that he would not approach the next film as another adaptation. But arriving at an original story meant solving its biggest puzzle first: the ending.

“Before we could write anything, we needed to crack the ending. We had to know how the film would conclude, what the major twist would be, and what could genuinely shock the audience,” he says. Abhishek and his team began with the idea of overturning something viewers had come to believe in the second film.

Over 100 drafts, abandoned scenes and a mass thriller
The road to the final screenplay involved several versions of the story, some of which were considerably darker than the one that eventually reached theatres. Abhishek says the process went beyond writing a hundred drafts. “Even today, if I sit down with my writer, we could probably come up with three or four different versions of Drishyam 3,” he says. Ultimately, the deciding factor was the kind of theatrical experience he wanted audiences to have. “I wanted to make a mass thriller where people go and enjoy it. They have to enjoy, they have to whistle, they have to clap,” he says.

Why Vijay Salgaonkar could not become too dark
One of the most important decisions involved protecting the character of Vijay Salgaonkar, whose intelligence has always been central to the franchise’s appeal. Despite the increasingly complex circumstances surrounding him, Abhishek did not want Vijay to become a man who relied on physical violence to resolve his problems. “He’s a harmless guy with an amazing brain and mind which works in his favour all the time,” Pathak says. The filmmakers explored darker possibilities but eventually removed scenes that took Vijay too far away from this defining quality.

The family-oriented nature of the franchise was another consideration. Abhishek believes that making the story darker simply for the sake of complexity would have taken it away from the spirit of ‘Drishyam’. “For me, Drishyam is all about the edginess of the thriller and the film where the audience are not aware what’s going to happen,” he says.

Why ‘Drishyam: The Conclusion’ could be the final chapter

Although the third film was not initially conceived under the title ‘The Conclusion’, Pathak gradually became convinced that the story was approaching its natural endpoint. “I was certain that this could be the final part, although we didn’t initially call it a conclusion. We were simply working on Drishyam 3,” he says.

Abhishek is wary of the temptation to extend a successful franchise simply because audiences are eager for another instalment. “I don’t think we should go and juice out just because there’s a franchise and there’s a brand, there’s a film which people want to watch again,” he says.

That does not mean he has ruled out every possibility of returning to the world of ‘Drishyam’. A compelling new idea could always change things. But he does not want to revisit the characters unless there is a story that genuinely justifies doing so. “If I get another story for Drishyam, I’ll make it a different film,” he says.