Drishyam 3 is holding. Twelve days into its theatrical run, Mohanlal and Jeethu Joseph’s franchise conclusion has accumulated approximately ₹224.75 crore at the worldwide gross box office. The film added ₹2.75–3 crore on its second Monday — its lowest single-day figure so far, but an expected plateau given how front-loaded the opening week was.
The Kerala box office has been the engine. The film has grossed approximately ₹76.30 crore from its home state alone — a number that underlines how completely Drishyam 3 dominated Kerala screens in its first two weeks. The rest of India contributed around ₹40.50 crore, taking the all-India gross to approximately ₹116.75 crore. Overseas markets have added over ₹108 crore to the tally, reflecting the franchise’s reach among the Malayalam diaspora across the GCC, North America, Australia, and Europe.
The Day-Wise Picture
The opening three days tell the story of what a franchise event looks like when it fires correctly. Day 1 delivered ₹43.30 crore worldwide. Day 2 held at ₹34.15 crore. Day 3, the Sunday, came in at ₹35.30 crore — unusually strong for a third day, suggesting that word-of-mouth was working in the film’s favour rather than against it. The first week total across all seven days lands at approximately ₹185 crore worldwide.
The second week showed the natural decay of a film past its opening rush — Days 8 through 11 ranged between ₹7.75 crore and ₹11.80 crore daily — but the holds are clean for a Malayalam film at this scale. There is no precipitous collapse of the kind that signals poor audience response or negative word-of-mouth.
Where It Stands in Malayalam Cinema History
At ₹224.75 crore, Drishyam 3 is all set to surpass Thudarum, Vaazha 2, and Manjummel Boys in worldwide gross. The next benchmark is ₹250 crore — a figure that would bring it into direct comparison with L2: Empuraan, the Mohanlal-Prithviraj Sukumaran action spectacle that currently sits among the highest-grossing Malayalam films ever made.
Whether Drishyam 3 can reach ₹250 crore will depend on how it holds through its third weekend and beyond. The film is running on 500 screens in Kerala as it enters week three, which suggests exhibitors have maintained confidence in its drawing power. If the second weekend — Days 13–15 — delivers a meaningful bump, the ₹250 crore target becomes realistic.
The comparison with L2: Empuraan is particularly significant because the two films represent different models of Malayalam blockbuster. Empuraan was a large-scale action spectacle with pan-Indian ambitions built into its DNA. Drishyam 3 is a thriller with no action set pieces, no VFX showcase, and no star-versus-star casting — just a family, a mystery, and thirteen years of audience investment in Georgekutty. That a film of this type is approaching Empuraan’s numbers is, by any measure, a statement about what the Drishyam franchise has built.
What Comes Next
Jeethu Joseph has not yet confirmed whether a Drishyam 4 is in development. The third film was positioned as a continuation rather than a conclusion, and the box office performance gives Panorama Studios every commercial reason to greenlight another chapter. Whether the story has more to tell is a creative question that only Jeethu Joseph can answer.
For now, the numbers speak for themselves. Drishyam 3 at ₹225 crore in 12 days, with ₹250 crore in sight, is the kind of run that changes what Malayalam cinema believes is possible from a thriller without spectacle.
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