Akshaye Khanna Exit Led To Script Rewrite On Drishyam 3

Director Abhishek Pathak says Jaideep Ahlawat signed on barely a week before the Mumbai shoot, pushing him to rewrite the entire screenplay under pressure.

Jaideep Ahlawat had roughly a week to figure out his dates and his character before Drishyam The Conclusion went on floors. That's the timeline director Abhishek Pathak has now confirmed in an exclusive interview with Bollywood Hungama, laying out just how close the film came to shooting with a different actor in what turned out to be one of its most talked-about parts.

Akshaye Khanna was originally attached to the role. He walked out at the last minute, and by Pathak's own account, the set in Mumbai was already built when the change happened. "We were just a week or 10 days away from my first schedule," Pathak told Bollywood Hungama. "The set was ready. We had to take a call and change the character completely."

What followed wasn't a quiet recast. Pathak, who also writes and produces the film, says he refused to hand Jaideep Ahlawat the same character as written for Khanna. "I was not comfortable with the same character being played by a different actor," he said. "I rewrote the entire screenplay."

The bigger worry, Pathak said, was familiarity. Ahlawat's character needed to feel new, not like a rerun of anything audiences had already seen from the franchise's last outing. "He shouldn't get the feeling that he had seen it already in Drishyam 2 (2022) when it came to his scenes," Pathak said, adding that the part was written "bahut interesting tareeke se... Aur bahut jaldi" — quickly, and with real intent.

Date management wasn't simple either. Pathak called it "a little chaotic," with some schedules pulled earlier than planned and others pushed to accommodate the shuffle. He credits Ahlawat for sitting down and sorting the logistics out himself. "Jaideep was also very accommodating," Pathak said. "Thanks to Jaideep for sorting things out for us at the last minute."

The gamble appears to have paid off, at least going by trailer reaction. The scenes between Ajay Devgn and Jaideep Ahlawat have drawn some of the strongest response since the trailer dropped, and Pathak is framing the whole episode as an accident that worked out. "Kuch alag hota hai toh maza aa jaata hai," he said. "You can't keep watching the same character." He was careful to add that the trailer shows "just a very brief glimpse" of what Ahlawat actually does in the film.

The cast has another reunion built into it. Prakash Raj joins the film as well, sharing screen space with Devgn for the first time since Singham in 2011, where the two played opposing sides as Jaykant Shikre and Bajirao Singham. Pathak was cagey about specifics but described Raj's role as "an elegant lawyer who's quite big in the legal circles," adding that the Singham-versus-Shikre dynamic was never the intent behind the casting.

Whether all this last-minute rewriting shows on screen is now down to audiences. Drishyam The Conclusion, previously titled Drishyam 3, is headed for release, and Pathak has already said, per Bollywood Hungama, that Mohanlal called Ajay Devgn after watching the trailer and liked what he saw. The makers are reportedly planning a screening for him before the film opens.