Ajay Devgn's franchise finale added Rs 40 crore on Saturday night alone, building on an opening day that was already the biggest of his career.
Drishyam 3 didn't need a second weekend to hit three digits. The film crossed Rs 100 crore net in India by Saturday night, just two days after release, according to figures reported by DNA India.
The breakdown is straightforward. Friday's opening brought in Rs 62 crore net domestically, with worldwide gross touching Rs 92 crore, numbers DNA India called the biggest opening of Ajay Devgn's career. Saturday added another Rs 40 crore by 9 pm, pushing the two-day domestic net past Rs 102 crore. And trade estimates cited in the report suggest the final Saturday tally, once midnight shows and late counts settle, could add another Rs 25-30 crore on top of that.
For a franchise that's been building since 2015, this is the payoff. Drishyam and Drishyam 2 were both official remakes of Mohanlal's Malayalam originals, which meant the story, twist and all, was already known to a chunk of the audience walking in. Drishyam: The Conclusion breaks that pattern. It's an original script, written by director Abhishek Pathak along with Aamil Keeyan Khan and Parveez Shaikh, closing out Vijay Salgaonkar's 11-year run from the law with nobody able to look up the ending beforehand.
That might explain why theatres stayed full through the weekend instead of thinning out after day one, the usual pattern for a film whose plot is public knowledge. Audiences this time had to show up to find out what happens.
Jaideep Ahlawat comes in as SP Crime Branch Rajveer Singh Tomar, the new face chasing Vijay across the finale, stepping into a slot the franchise has reserved for formidable cops going back to Tabu's Meera Deshmukh. Tabu returns here too, alongside Shriya Saran, Prakash Raj, Rajat Kapoor, Kamlesh Sawant, Ishita Dutta and Mrunal Jadhav.
Panorama Studios produced the film with Star Studio18 presenting, under producers Alok Jain, Ajit Andhare, Kumar Mangat Pathak and Abhishek Pathak himself, who also directs.
The real test now is whether Drishyam 3 holds through Sunday and into the weekdays, when Hindi theatrical business usually drops hard without a festival holiday to prop it up. A Gandhi Jayanti release gave it a running start most October films don't get. Whether that translates into the kind of multi-week hold that turned the first two Drishyam films into word-of-mouth hits, rather than just a front-loaded opening, is the number to watch over the next seven days.
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