At the ‘Drishyam 3’ trailer launch, Tabu reflected on how the Malayalam franchise’s shadow loomed large over the Hindi sequel. The timing couldn’t have been trickier. ‘Drishyam 2’ arrived during cinema’s tentative recovery from the pandemic, when audiences were still cautious about returning to screens and the original-language film had already saturated the market. The scepticism was widespread even among her own circle, “When the second part was going to release, it was just after the pandemic and everything. And the Malayalam version had already come. Some of my friends themselves were like, ‘Yeh aa gayi hai, tum log ki picture kaun dekhne jaayega?’” Despite these concerns proving unfounded, the Hindi adaptation not only drew viewers to theatres but sparked a cultural shift. Rather than competing with the Malayalam iteration, the remake’s commercial success essentially erased the earlier anxieties transforming industry cynicism into audience enthusiasm.
