Some franchises are built on scale, and some are built on trust. Drishyam belongs firmly to the second kind. There is no elaborate universe, no post credit teasers, no attempt to out-spectacle the previous instalment. What Jeethu Joseph and Mohanlal have built instead, over more than a decade, is a family that audiences keep returning to, and a producer in Antony Perumbavoor who now says the story is not done yet. At the Mazhavil Entertainment Awards, Perumbavoor confirmed that a fourth Drishyam film is on the way, calling it his assurance that Georgekutty's story will continue.
To understand why that word carries weight, it helps to look at how this franchise actually grew. Drishyam began in 2013 as a modestly budgeted Malayalam thriller, and went on to become the first Malayalam film to cross the 50 crore mark and running in theatres for more than 150 days, including a 125 day run in the UAE that made it one of the longest running Malayalam films there. For a film with a budget in the single digit crores, that kind of theatrical life was unheard of at the time, and it is what first established Georgekutty, the ordinary cable operator who outwits the entire police machinery to protect his family, as one of Malayalam cinema's most enduring characters.
The sequel took a very different route to reach audiences, and this is where the franchise's story gets genuinely interesting. Drishyam 2 was shot entirely during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when theatres across the country were shut or running at severely limited capacity, and it released not in cinemas but directly on Amazon Prime Video in February 2021. It never had the chance to test itself at the box office, yet it went on to be regarded as one of the finest sequels in Indian cinema, continuing the story with the same principal cast and proving that Georgekutty's world did not need a theatrical release to hold an audience. In many ways, that OTT chapter kept the franchise alive through a period when very few films of its kind could reach viewers at all.
Drishyam 3 is what brought the franchise back to the big screen, and it did so on a scale the earlier films never operated at. Released on 21 May 2026, the film opened to one of Mollywood's biggest ever Day 1s, crossed the 100 crore mark globally within three days, and 200 crore within ten. By the time its theatrical run wound down after 45 days and roughly 62,600 shows, a worldwide gross of 239.83 crore, made up of 128.13 crore from India and 111.70 crore from overseas markets, with a net collection in India of 110.49 crore making Drishyam 3 the fourth highest grossing Malayalam film of all time, sitting just below Manjummel Boys.
That is the backdrop against which Perumbavoor's announcement lands. He did not offer a release date, a story outline, or even a working title, and both Jeethu Joseph and Mohanlal have stayed quiet on the specifics so far. Joseph has previously spoken about being nudged toward each new chapter almost as soon as the previous one released, and has been fairly consistent in saying he will only move ahead once he has a story that genuinely earns another instalment, rather than making a fourth film simply because the third one worked. That restraint has arguably been the franchise's biggest strength. Neither Drishyam 2 nor Drishyam 3 felt like a rushed cash-in, and both found ways to meaningfully extend Georgekutty's predicament rather than repeat it.
There is also a neat contrast playing out alongside this news. The Hindi adaptation of the franchise, led by Ajay Devgn as Vijay Salgaonkar, is heading toward its own conclusion, with Drishyam: The Conclusion set for a theatrical release on 2 October 2026 as the closing chapter of that remake series. So at more or less the same moment that the Hindi version of this story is preparing to say goodbye, the original Malayalam franchise is confirming it still has more to tell. That timing alone should tell you how differently the two versions have been positioned, one built to wrap up neatly, the other still finding new ground to cover more than twelve years after it began.
Mollywood
