T-Series and Panorama Studios have debuted the first trailer for the upcoming Bollywood thriller Drishyam 2, a sequel to the hit 2015 film starring Ajay Devgn as a man who schemes to protect his family from the cops after his wife and daughters kill a creep who was harassing them. The Hindi language film was a remake of the 2013 Malayalam language hit of the same name. Drishyam 2 is a remake of the 2021 sequel to the original Malayalam film, which was also remade in the Tamil language as Papanasam, in the Telugu language as Drushyam, and in the Kannada language as Drishya.

India, for those who might not know, has several thriving film industries that work mostly independently of each other, which should explain how one country has now produced five versions of the same exact story. Not to mention the Sri Lankan and Indonesian remakes. This should also explain just how valuable an I.P. the Malayalam language original has been.

In Drishyam 2, Devgn returns as the movie-obsessed Goa man Vijay Salgaonkar, who learns that a new cop is sniffing around his family in connection to the unsolved case from the last film. Directed by Abhishek Pathak, Drishyam 2 is set seven years after the events of the first movie, which ended with Vijay cryptically confessing to his family’s crimes to the policewoman in charge, but apparently being let off quietly in the interest of moral fairness. But in those seven years, the Goa police always remained suspicious of him.

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“The truth is like the seed of a tree. No matter how deep you bury it, it will eventually come out some day.” Vijay says solemnly in the new trailer, over shots of him burying the body of the man who harrassed his wife and daughters. Spoiler alert, he’d hidden the body beneath an under-construction police station.

Vijay’s adversary this time around is a new investigating officer, played by Akshaye Khanna. The officer prides himself on his ability to read suspects. As the cat-and-mouse chase intensifies, Vijay warns his family that they will probably have to spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulder. The trailer ends with the surprise return of the first film’s prime investigator, played by Tabu, who joins forces with her successor as they close in on Vijay.

In the Drishyam films, Vijay is presented as a clinical man who taps into his vast knowledge of films to methodically pull off tasks both small and large. It was said that the original Drishyam was inspired by the hit Japanese novel 'The Devotion of Suspect X', although director Jeethu Joseph denied the claim. Incidentally, The Devotion of Suspect X has already been adapted into several films internationally. An official Hindi language adaptation directed by Sujoy Ghosh and starring Kareena Kapoor Khan is also in the works at Netflix.

This is Devgn’s fourth film this year, after Gangubai Kathiawadi, RRR, and Runway 34. The actor is best known for playing brooding action heroes, across a three-decade career that has made him one of Bollywood’s biggest male stars. The massively respected Tabu would probably best be known to Western audiences for her roles in Mira Nair’s The Namesake and A Suitable Boy, and Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. The rather reclusive Khanna spent several years out of action after cementing himself as a heartthrob in the early 2000s. He is now in the midst of a career comeback.

Set in the uniquely cinematic coastal state of Goa, Drishyam 2 also features Shriya Saran, Ishita Dutta, Rajat Kapoor and Kamlesh Sawant. The film will be released in theaters on November 18. You can watch the trailer here and read the film’s official synopsis down below:

7 years after the case related to Vijay Salgaonkar and his family was closed, a series of unexpected events bring a truth to light that threatens to change everything for the Salgaonkars. Can Vijay save his family this time?