Ajay Devgn and the Drishyam ending that stopped following the Malayalam script

Ajay Devgn

Photo: Bollywood Hungama / CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	April 2, 1969 New Delhi, India
Occupation	Actor, film director and producer
Known for	RRR, Drishyam, Gangubai Kathiawadi
Awards	2 National Film · National Film (shared) · Padma Shri · Filmfare · Filmfare Critics

For two films, Vijay Salgaonkar was a borrowed man. The cable-TV operator who buries a crime under a family alibi began as Georgekutty, the character Mohanlal created for Jeethu Joseph’s Malayalam thriller, and Ajay Devgn’s Hindi Drishyam and its sequel followed that blueprint scene by scene. Drishyam: The Conclusion, now in Indian cinemas, is the first time the Hindi version walks away from its source and invents its own ending. It has also handed Devgn the biggest opening day of a career that already runs past a hundred films.

That is the Devgn paradox in miniature. He is the least demonstrative leading man of his generation, a star whose face rarely tells you what he intends, and that stillness has been his most reliable asset for three decades. The Hollywood Reporter India’s review of the new film credits his “trademark blankness” with making Salgaonkar harder to read than ever. Yet much of his late career has run on material that arrived pre-tested, usually a southern hit or a sequel to one of his own.

He grew up inside the machinery of Hindi action cinema. His father, Veeru Devgan, was a stunt choreographer and action director; his mother, Veena Devgan, produced films. Their son, Vishal Virender Devgan, arrived in New Delhi on 2 April 1969, into a Punjabi family with roots in Amritsar, and was raised in Mumbai, where he went to Silver Beach High School in Juhu and then Mithibai College. When he was launched as a lead, several other young actors named Vishal were debuting at the same moment, so he took the screen name Ajay. The surname lost its second “a” much later, in 2009, at his family’s request.

Phool Aur Kaante introduced him in 1991 with the stunt that still defines the brand: an entrance in the splits, balanced across two moving motorcycles. It won him the Filmfare award for best male debut and a decade of action vehicles. The turn came through quieter work. Mahesh Bhatt’s Zakhm, set against the Bombay riots of 1993, earned him his first National Film Award for best actor, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali cast him in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam as Vanraj, the husband who helps his wife search for the man she still loves.

The early 2000s opened with a string of flops, and then a single year redrew him. In 2002 he played a Mumbai gangster for Ram Gopal Varma in Company and the revolutionary Bhagat Singh for Rajkumar Santoshi in The Legend of Bhagat Singh; the second role brought a second National Award and the Filmfare critics’ prize. Prakash Jha’s Gangaajal and Vishal Bhardwaj‘s Omkara, an Othello moved to small-town Uttar Pradesh that screened at Cannes, fixed the reputation of an actor directors trusted with silence. He also stepped behind the camera, directing Kajol and himself in U Me Aur Hum in 2008.

The commercial Devgn arrived with the new decade. Golmaal 3 and Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai were hits within months of each other, and in 2011 Singham, a remake of a Tamil success, turned his partnership with Rohit Shetty into an industry of its own. Shetty had made his directing debut with Devgn on Zameen years earlier; together they built a cop franchise that grew into a shared screen universe and a comedy series that is still running. Drishyam, directed by Nishikant Kamat in 2015, carried the Mohanlal thriller to a Hindi audience and gave him the role that would follow him for a decade.

Tanhaji, his hundredth film, cast him as the 17th-century Maratha commander Tanaji Malusare and became the top-grossing Indian film of 2020, with ₹367.65 crore worldwide. It brought his third National Award for best actor, shared that year with the Tamil star Suriya. Drishyam 2, directed by Abhishek Pathak, became one of the biggest hits of his career, and a brief, much-praised appearance in S. S. Rajamouli’s RRR put him in front of an audience far beyond Hindi cinema.

The record has a less flattering reading. Several of his biggest hits rest on borrowed or recycled stories, and when he directs, the pattern repeats: Bholaa, his Hindi remake of the Tamil thriller Kaithi, disappointed critics and the box office alike. His original swings have often sunk. Maidaan, in which he played the football coach Syed Abdul Rahim, drew some of the best reviews of his recent career and lost money, while the 2025 sequels Son of Sardaar 2 and De De Pyaar De 2 fell flat. Then there is the side venture that unsettles part of his audience. Lens Vault Studios, which he runs with Danish Devgn, announced Bal Tanhaji, a story of the young Tanaji built with generative AI, and its teaser split social media between curiosity and alarm.

GQ’s Ankur Pathak once wrote that Devgn has never needed a comeback film because he never really goes off-screen. Raid 2, the sequel to his tax-officer thriller, was one of the bigger Hindi hits of 2025. Dhamaal 4, Indra Kumar’s ensemble comedy, opened in July 2026 and closed its domestic run at around ₹160 crore net. Drishyam: The Conclusion, again directed by Pathak, followed on 2 October, with Tabu back as Meera Deshmukh, Shriya Saran as Nandini and Jaideep Ahlawat as a new police adversary, SP Rajveer Singh Tomar. The trade tracker Sacnilk put its first-day India net at ₹66.75 crore, well above the ₹43.70 crore of Singham Again, his previous best. Mohanlal’s own Drishyam 3 had reached Malayalam screens in May with a different story, so the Hindi film is no longer anyone’s copy, and Devgn has said it closes the Hindi series for good.

Off set he guards his privacy; Filmfare has described him as a self-confessed private person. He met Kajol on Gundaraj in 1995 and married her at the family home in 1999. Their children, Nysa and Yug, gave their initials to his visual-effects company, NY VFXWAALA, which won a National Award for its work on Shivaay. His banner, Ajay Devgn FFilms, has produced since 2000, and in 2016 he received the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honours.

Next comes Golmaal 5, Rohit Shetty’s comedy dated for 8 January 2027, with Akshay Kumar joining the old gang. It is another franchise instalment. What the Drishyam finale shows is that his stillness works hardest when the story around it is new, and that the biggest crowd of his career turned up for the one chapter nobody had seen before.