The franchise finale posted the largest three-day haul in the series' history, though India estimates differ sharply between trade trackers reporting Rs 174 crore and Rs 213 crore.
Ajay Devgn has a new career-best. Drishyam 3, directed by Abhishek Pathak, has pulled in what trade trackers are calling the biggest opening weekend of his career, though exactly how big depends on which number you're reading.
Bollywood Hungama's box office analysis puts the India haul at Rs 213 crore across three days, with another Rs 63 crore from overseas, taking the worldwide total to Rs 275 crore. A separate Bollywood Hungama report, filed the same morning, tracks the domestic weekend at Rs 174 crore, built from Rs 62.03 crore on Friday, Rs 50.95 crore on Saturday and Rs 60 crore on Sunday. The two figures don't reconcile, and neither report explains the gap. Either way, nobody's arguing about the direction. This is the franchise's biggest weekend, full stop.
The franchise math is the more interesting story here. The original Drishyam opened to Rs 23.05 crore back in the day. Drishyam 2 nearly tripled that, landing at Rs 64.14 crore and going on to a lifetime total of Rs 240.54 crore. Drishyam 3, or Drishyam The Conclusion as it's also being billed, has now added another Rs 109.86 crore on top of that sequel's opening number, a jump north of 170 percent. Stack the three openings side by side and the franchise has gone from Rs 23 crore to Rs 174 crore in two sequels. That's roughly 7.5 times where it started.
What makes the number sting even more for rival productions is the budget. Drishyam 3 was made for under Rs 100 crore, per Bollywood Hungama's estimates, which means even the more conservative domestic figure already covers the cost several times over. Trade projections have the film finishing its run somewhere around Rs 650 crore worldwide, a number that would make this one of the highest return-on-investment plays for an A-list Hindi film in recent memory.
The weekday trend is what decides whether this becomes an all-time blockbuster or simply a very good one. A strong Monday hold looks near-certain given the weekend momentum, the only question is by how much the numbers dip once the opening rush settles. Thrillers built on word of mouth, and this franchise has always lived on word of mouth, tend to either hold flat through the week or fall off a cliff once the novelty wears thin.
Shriya Saran returns alongside Devgn in what's being marketed as the franchise's closing chapter, a label the box office numbers are doing nothing to undercut. Whether this really is the last Drishyam or merely the last one with this cast is a question nobody's answering yet. For now, the franchise has its biggest number on record, two different versions of what that number actually is, and a Monday verdict still to come.
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