Director Abhishek Pathak Reveals How He Protected the Climax Secrecy of Drishyam: The Conclusion Even from His Crew

In the entirety of Drishyam franchise, a secret is only safe until it’s out on the big screens. Even while shooting Drishyam: The Conclusion, director Abhishek Pathak went to great lengths to safeguard the climax even from the crew on his own sets! The climax of the Hindi version is different from the Malayalam version starring Mohanlal that was released this year.

Usually, the department heads and crew members are handed the entire bound scripts weeks before the shooting takes place. On the sets of Drishyam: The Conclusion, Pathak offered limited access of the climax to most of the crew members on set.

“Initially, the script was not given to a lot of people in the crew,” Pathak reveals. “We were holding the draft as long as possible, until people began coming to my door and asking for the script as they had to start working! Only then I gave it to them… but without the climax.” “So a lot of crew members didn’t know the climax of the film! It wasn’t given to a lot of people because we were a little worried.”

“For some HODs, knowing the climax was not going to change their preparation. They really didn’t have to worry about what he (Vijay) would do in that particular scene. So I’d tell them, ‘I’ll give you a brief about what I need from you in this particular scene… but you don’t need to know what exactly is happening at this point,'” Pathak reveals, adding, “Having said that, the whole crew is a family. We’ve been working since the second part, so they all know how important this film is for even them. Everyone has been nice and understanding.”

Maintaining the secrecy was much more than ‘maintaining’ it on-set; it was also about staying one step ahead of fan theories that took over the internet after Drishyam 2. The filmmaker invested months in scanning through fan theories on platforms like Reddit to gauge what’s being expected by the audience, and put those theories aside entirely.

“I actually went through a lot of fan theories on Reddit and the Internet. We were like, ‘Four people are talking about this, five people are talking about that… so it cannot happen.’ We were trying to stay away from the obvious, and come with something that people weren’t expecting at all,” he says.

Talking about the process of bringing more sharpness to the edits, he continues, “We shot the film, came on the edit, and there was maybe a 10-day shoot pending. In the pending shoot, we actually recorded voice-overs and put everything on the edit to make it better… to hide information and reveal certain things in a way that people enjoy it much better.”

Pathak says that the “climax is the real (star of the) show.” “If the big reveal can be held for as long as possible, that’s the best thing!”

Drishyam 3 arrives in cinemas on October 2.