Abhishek Pathak has a theory about 2026, and it's a simple one: give people a reason to leave the house, and they'll leave the house.

The director of Drishyam: The Conclusion told Variety this week that the year's run of theatrical hits isn't a fluke. It's a pattern. "Numbers are going berserk right now," he said, and he's not wrong about the timeline. Border 2 kicked things off. Dhurandhar: The Revenge kept the momentum going. Then came Bhooth Bangla, Welcome To The Jungle and Awarapan 2, each finding its own audience in cinemas rather than waiting for a streaming date.

The one that matters most to Pathak's argument, though, is Mirzapur: The Movie. Last week's release crossed the Rs 100 crore mark domestically within days of opening, according to Bollywood Hungama, and has held its numbers since. That's not a small thing for a film built off a streaming franchise. It suggests something Pathak clearly wants to believe about his own film too: that familiarity with a story, even one people have already watched play out, doesn't kill theatrical interest. It can fuel it.

"If you give them a good, entertaining film, they come to watch it in theatres," Pathak said. No hedging, no complicated theory of distribution windows or ticket pricing. Just make it worth their time.

The bet on Drishyam

That's the bet Pathak is placing with Drishyam: The Conclusion, which brings Ajay Devgn back as Vijay Salgaonkar for a third instalment, alongside Tabu and Shriya Saran reprising their roles. Jaideep Ahlawat and Prakash Raj join this time around, new pieces in a franchise that has spent two films establishing just how far a father will go to protect his family.

The film reaches theatres on October 2, which puts it in the thick of a festive corridor where Mirzapur: The Movie is still playing and where audiences have, by Pathak's own read, developed a habit of actually showing up. Whether that habit holds for a third Drishyam outing, built on two films' worth of accumulated goodwill and expectation, is the question Pathak isn't quite asking out loud. He's stating the conclusion he wants: audiences haven't given up on cinemas, they've just been waiting for something worth the ticket.

What he isn't addressing, at least not yet, is whether a franchise this many years and films deep can still surprise anyone. Drishyam's whole appeal has always rested on the twist, on Vijay staying one step ahead of the law. Pathak's comments are about theatrical appetite in general, not about what his script actually does with it.

That answer arrives October 2. Until then, Pathak's argument stands on 2026's box office numbers, and on a trailer already out in the world doing its own convincing.