New Delhi: Not everyone working on the Ajay Devgn-starrer Drishyam: The Conclusion had a complete picture of the film’s climax. In fact, developing the screenplay involved more than 100 drafts.
Screenwriter Aamil Keeyan Khan, in a recent interview with The Free Press Journal, revealed that the makers took strict measures to prevent the film’s major twists from being leaked.
“Abhishek (Pathak) basically ran the production like Vijay Salgaonkar would. The climax wasn’t given to a large part of the crew. People got information on a need-to-know basis,” Khan recalled.
“Sometimes a department only knew what it needed to execute a scene, not necessarily why it was executing it. A lot of actors and crew from the film, and my own friends and relatives, tried to bribe me for the ending. But like Gaitonde, I remained honest and loyal to the producers,” he added.
Khan, who co-wrote the film with director Abhishek Pathak and Parveez Shaikh, said that the screenplay went through an extensive rewriting process. The writer added that he lost count of the exact number of drafts he worked on.
“I have folders inside folders, drafts with dates, numbers, dates after numbers, and files called things like ‘FINAL’, ‘FINAL 2’, ‘FINAL FINAL’ and presumably ‘FINAL PLEASE GOD ‘. I have genuinely lost count, but well over a hundred drafts in different forms. Easily,” he said.
The team also ensured that strict measures were taken to prevent the major plot twists from being leaked. Khan revealed that some departments were told only what was required to execute a particular scene, without being given the complete context.
Khan further said that one of the biggest challenges was creating an original story while retaining the elements that audiences associate with the Drishyam franchise.
“It was an enormous mountain to climb. You have a beloved franchise, a family that the audiences have lived with for years, and the legacy of two hugely loved films sitting on your shoulders. And most importantly, how do you surprise an audience for the third time?” he said.
The writer explained that audiences already know Vijay Salgaonkar and are familiar with his way of thinking, making it harder to balance humour, family, emotion, drama and thrills without allowing any one element to dominate the story. In the last part of the trilogy, Khan said that Vijay Salgaonkar is a “blank slate.”
Writing his character was challenging because the audience knows him. They know how his mind works, the tricks he has up his sleeve, and “they are suspicious of everything the poor man does.”
The battle didn’t end here. The writers also had to build an original screenplay for the conclusion while “retaining the DNA of Drishyam.”
“It still had to have humour, family, emotion, drama and thrills without any one ingredient swallowing the others. It was a very, very thin tightrope. Thankfully, none of us looked down,” Khan added.