Ajay Devgn's thriller sequel held strong through the weekend and is now staring down its first Monday test with trade watchers split on how big the dip will be.
Three days in, and Abhishek Pathak's Drishyam The Conclusion has already cleared its reported production cost. The film opened to Rs 62 crore net in India on Friday, as per early estimates reported by The Free Press Journal, before dipping to Rs 53.50 crore on Saturday and bouncing back to Rs 61 crore on Sunday. Add it up and the three-day domestic net sits past Rs 150 crore, a number that would make most sequels nervous and most producers very happy.
The worldwide gross tells an even louder story. In three days, Drishyam The Conclusion has pulled in Rs 272.80 crore gross globally, crossing the Rs 200 crore mark on that front alone. For a franchise that built its reputation on slow-burn tension rather than spectacle, these are numbers that put it in genuinely big-ticket territory.
The Monday question
Here's where things get interesting. Weekend highs rarely survive the Monday commute, and Drishyam The Conclusion now has to prove it can hold an audience on a working day. Early trade estimates cited by The Free Press Journal put the fourth-day collection somewhere between Rs 15 crore and Rs 18 crore net, which would push the four-day domestic total to roughly Rs 190-195 crore. That's a steep fall from Sunday's Rs 61 crore, but it's the kind of drop every big opener takes once the weekend crowd thins out. Better night-show footfalls could push the number higher, the report noted, though nothing is locked in until the actual figures land.
What makes this Monday test matter more than usual is the budget math. The makers haven't put out an official figure, but reports peg the production cost at around Rs 110 crore. If that number holds, the film was already profitable by Sunday night, three days in. Everything from here, Monday onward, is pure upside, and it sets up Drishyam The Conclusion to be filed as a clean hit rather than a marginal one.
The cast, led by Ajay Devgn alongside Tabu, Shriya Saran and Jaideep Ahlawat, has carried this franchise through two prior instalments built almost entirely on dread and dinner-table tension rather than action set pieces. That template appears to have worked again. Reviews have skewed positive, and The Free Press Journal's own critique, which handed the film three stars, praised its control over information, writing that the movie "stays true to its name, showing only what you need to see at that point, and revealing the rest later."
Whether that patience translates into word-of-mouth strong enough to survive the week is the next thing to watch. A clean three-day run is one thing. Holding through midweek, when the opening-weekend crowd has already seen it and the rest of the audience needs convincing, is the real test for any film chasing the Rs 300 crore mark. Those numbers should start trickling in by Tuesday morning.
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