I understand why Hindi cinema clings to Drishyam. In an industry addicted to opening-weekend noise, this franchise offers the reassuring sight of adults following a plot. Cause leads to consequence. Props matter. A family’s fear has weight. The audience is invited to remember details rather than applaud ancestry. The latest chapter’s strong theatrical run confirms that viewers still respond to narrative engineering when Bollywood remembers to provide it.
Public box-office tracking from Bollywood Hungama placed the film among the year’s major Hindi successes, while its daily collections table showed sustained business beyond the initial burst. I am pleased by that. I am also worried that the industry will learn the most superficial possible lesson: make more Drishyam, revive more brands and replace the shortage of scripts with an abundance of numerals.
The pleasure is structural
The franchise works because it respects sequence. Vijay Salgaonkar does not possess superhero strength or dynastic glamour. His weapon is accumulated knowledge: films watched, routines observed, human behaviour anticipated. That makes the drama unusually democratic. The hero’s intelligence must be demonstrated through action, and the screenplay cannot merely announce that he is brilliant while surrounding him with fools.
Ajay Devgn’s restraint suits this design. He does not decorate every beat with a performance flourish. Silence becomes tactical. A glance may indicate calculation, fear or the effort to conceal both. This is star acting used in service of a mechanism. Bollywood too often reverses the relationship, bending the mechanism until every scene advertises the star.
The family also matters. The consequences are emotional before they are legal. The audience understands why each new inquiry threatens to reopen trauma. In weaker thrillers, relatives are hostages provided by the screenplay. Here, they carry memory differently, and those differences generate tension. Craft, not scale, creates suspense.
Remakes are not shameful; dependency is
Much of the Drishyam phenomenon rests on stories that travelled across Indian languages. I have no moral objection to remakes. Cinema has always adapted, translated and reinterpreted. The dishonest part is pretending that industrial dependence on already-proven material constitutes creative health. Hindi producers increasingly want the confidence of a tested plot, a recognisable title and a bankable star before anybody takes a risk.
A good adaptation can change performance, rhythm and cultural detail for a new audience. A lazy remake reproduces shots while charging for familiarity. Drishyam succeeded because its Hindi version found a tonal identity and because Devgn’s persona fitted the guarded family man. That should not become an excuse to scout every regional success as raw material before Hindi writers receive comparable investment.
Original screenwriters still confront an absurd hierarchy. Stars, marketing and release dates are discussed as assets; the script is treated as a document that may be repaired once those assets are assembled. Then the industry expresses amazement when audiences reject expensive incoherence. Drishyam is evidence that structure sells. It is not evidence that only an existing franchise can provide structure.
Nepotism thrives where writing is weak
The franchise debate connects directly to Bollywood’s talent problem. When scripts are thin, films depend on audience affection for faces. That environment favours inherited celebrity because familiarity can be marketed before competence is demonstrated. A well-written thriller is less obedient. It requires actors to serve clues, timing and ensemble dynamics. A surname cannot repair a missing second act.
I do not object to an actor having famous parents. I object to the industry repeatedly presenting access as destiny and then asking viewers to admire basic adequacy as growth. If producers invested more in genre writing, casting would become more merit-sensitive because roles would have specific demands. The performer who can create tension in silence would beat the performer with the larger launch campaign.
Drishyam’s success should therefore encourage smaller, writer-led thrillers with disciplined budgets. Instead, I expect meetings in which executives request “another family man with a secret,” preferably attached to a star’s available dates. Formula is what happens when decision-makers copy the visible furniture of success and ignore the load-bearing beams.
A franchise must still earn continuation
Sequels carry a particular danger for mystery stories. The first film creates a brilliant closed system. Continuation must reopen it without making the original resolution feel fraudulent. Each additional twist risks turning intelligence into omnipotence. If Vijay has anticipated every human action years in advance, he stops being a clever man and becomes a screenwriter wearing a character’s face.
The new chapter must therefore deepen cost, not merely add concealment. What has prolonged secrecy done to the family? Can protection become control? Is Vijay preserving his loved ones or trapping them inside his plan? Those questions produce drama because they threaten the hero’s moral certainty. Another chain of convenient evidence may entertain, but it will gradually empty the premise.
Franchise custodians should also know when to stop. “The Conclusion” ought to mean something. Bollywood has a habit of treating closure as an underperforming asset. A final scene leaves the smallest opening, and commerce drives a truck through it. Stories gain power from endings. Denying them rest is not audience service; it is brand management.
The audience is less foolish than the industry assumes
Executives often explain failures by blaming changing tastes, ticket prices or short attention spans. All three matter. Yet viewers repeatedly sustain films that provide clear stakes and satisfying progression. They may arrive because of a trailer or star, but word of mouth depends on whether the experience keeps its promises.
The Drishyam audience enjoys being slightly behind the protagonist and slightly ahead of investigators. It wants to test theories. That active pleasure is very different from passive consumption of spectacle. Hindi cinema should build more films around such participation: courtroom dramas where arguments matter, heist films with intelligible geography, mysteries with fair clues and romances in which choices have credible consequences.
None of this requires joyless seriousness. The classics I love understood entertainment as construction. A song could alter a relationship; comedy could reveal character; a reversal could feel surprising and inevitable. The current industry sometimes mistakes clutter for generosity. A film contains action, romance, patriotism and a cameo, yet offers no reason to care what happens next.
What producers should copy
Copy the respect for setup and payoff. Copy the willingness to let actors underplay. Copy the disciplined use of locations and objects. Copy the understanding that middle-class domestic detail can carry suspense. Copy the confidence to let the audience think. Do not copy the exact family, crime, visual palette and title typography.
Producers should commission multiple scripts before attaching stars. Pay writers for development drafts. Allow table reads to expose logic gaps. Hire script editors whose authority survives a celebrity’s whim. Test whether a thriller’s solution is both surprising and retrospectively fair. These practices sound mundane because filmmaking is a craft before it is a launch event.
Streaming platforms should take the same lesson. Their thriller pile has become a warehouse of dim lighting, abusive policemen and endings that advertise season two. A mystery is not sophisticated because everybody whispers. It becomes satisfying when information is controlled with purpose. Drishyam’s mainstream success demonstrates that clarity need not be simplistic.
I am glad the franchise prospered. It proves that audiences will support an adult narrative led by performance and design rather than nepotistic entitlement. My complaint is pre-emptive because I know this industry’s appetite for the wrong conclusion. Drishyam should inspire Bollywood to trust writers. If it inspires only more sequels, remakes and suspicious fathers studying CCTV footage, a victory for storytelling will have produced another defeat for imagination.
