The instinct that nearly ended Suriya’s career as a box office force is the same instinct that has now produced the most impressive hat-trick in Tamil cinema this year. Scene, his crime comedy with Malayalam director Jithu Madhavan, has crossed Rs 117 crore worldwide in just three days. It is his third consecutive Rs 100 crore opening weekend of 2026, after Karuppu, which collected Rs 310 crore worldwide and Vishwanath and Sons, which collected Rs 209 crore worldwide. No Tamil actor has delivered three Rs 100 crore openings in a single calendar year in recent times.

But the hat-trick is not the story. The story is how he got here.

The fall

After winning the National Award for Best Actor for Soorarai Pottru and earning universal praise for Jai Bhim, both of which released directly on Amazon Prime Video during the pandemic and never had proper theatrical runs, Suriya returned to cinemas with a clear intention: he would not go back to the formulaic filmmaking that had defined his middle period.…