Drishyam 3 Director Explains Akshaye Khanna's Exit
Director Abhishek Pathak and the producer have both described Akshaye Khanna's exit from Drishyam 3. Their accounts differ, and his side is not on record.
With Drishyam 3 now past Rs 300 crore, the story of the actor who left it just before the shoot is back in the news. Director Abhishek Pathak has described the exit in interviews, and the producer has given a sharper version. The two accounts do not match in every detail, and Akshaye Khanna's own side is missing from what we found.
What the director says
In an interview with Hindustan Times, summarised by the Indian Express on Sept. 22, Pathak said Khanna, who played the investigating officer in Drishyam 2, backed out seven days before the scene with Ajay Devgn was to be filmed, following the success of Dhurandhar. He said the exit left the whole crew unhappy but not panicked: "I won't say panic, but we were not happy with the whole idea. I thought, Ye kya tareeka hua."
Pathak said the hardest part was refusing to cancel the shoot, since a set had been built, dates had been locked by several big actors and daily-wage crew members depended on the schedule. He asked for two or three days to work out a plan and rewrote the character.
Separate Indian Express and DNA India reports of another interview say he described the exit as not about money, since fees had been revisited and a contract signed, with the dispute centred on Khanna's repeated demand to wear a wig. We could read only the headlines and summaries of those two reports, so we treat that account as reported, not verified.
The replacement
The makers hired Jaideep Ahlawat as the new officer, Rajveer Singh Tomar, an SP in the Crime Branch, according to ThePrint. Pathak told Hindustan Times it was a daunting task for Ahlawat to join at the last minute, with two readings and a look test in Mumbai. He said Ahlawat asked, "Casting change or character change?" and he answered that the character was changed. NDTV's review said, "Come for Ajay Devgn, stay for Jaideep Ahlawat."
The producer's version
The Indian Express recounts that producer Kumar Mangat Pathak told Bollywood Hungama earlier that Khanna left because he wanted to renegotiate his fee after Dhurandhar. The report says the producer called him "unprofessional" and said the energy on a previous film they made together was "toxic," and that Khanna demanded a wig that did not fit the story. These are the producer's claims, made in an interview, and we are not endorsing them.
Where the accounts differ
The director and the producer are both on the film's side. Reported details also differ on timing, with seven days in one account and five days in other reports, and on whether money was a factor. The Indian Express article includes both the director's and the producer's remarks, and the director is quoted as saying the crew's priority was not to shut the shoot down.
The result
Drishyam 3: The Conclusion has since crossed Rs 300 crore net in India, according to NDTV, making it Ajay Devgn's highest-grossing film. Whatever happened behind the scenes, the film kept its schedule.
What we could not confirm
We could not find a statement from Akshaye Khanna or his representatives responding to these accounts, and we are not stating his reasons. We could not verify the producer's claims about conduct on an earlier film, and no one else has corroborated them in what we found. The money-and-wig account and the five-day timing come from reports we could only read in summary. We do not take a side in this dispute.
Sources
*Cover photo: Bollywood Hungama, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Akshaye_Khanna_still3.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Akshaye_Khanna_still3.jpg)* (CC BY 3.0).*