Drishyam 3 director Abhishek Pathak says the climax was cracked before the script

Abhishek Pathak says the ending of Drishyam: The Conclusion came before everything else. The director of Ajay Devgn's thriller, the third and final film in the franchise, said the team did not properly start the screenplay until they had cracked the climax.

"If you don't get the climax right, the entire build-up can fall apart," Pathak said. The team worked backwards from that ending so that even the smallest detail had a purpose. Whenever they felt viewers could guess what was coming, they went back and rethought it. The film went through many drafts, and the work carried on into the edit.

The Hindi film closes Vijay Salgaonkar's story and takes its own route instead of adapting the Malayalam original. Pathak said that after Drishyam 2 he felt a third film had to bring something new. Audiences now remember the clues and the dialogue, he explained, so a repeated formula would not surprise them. He added that the team has great respect for what the Malayalam films built.

Mohanlal, who plays Georgekutty in the Malayalam series, has watched the Hindi finale. In a video, he said he was truly impressed with how the story was brought to a fitting end, and congratulated Pathak, Kumar Mangat Pathak, Ajay Devgn and the whole cast and crew.

On another film with Devgn, Pathak said the two share a very good equation and he would be glad to work with him again, on a thriller or something completely different. The story has to come first, he said, and he does not want to rush into a continuation of this success.

At the box office, reports say the film's net collection in India has crossed ₹323 crore in its second week.