The Witches of Eastwick

• Director George Miller quit the production twice during a brutal shoot marked by budget fights with the studio — Jack Nicholson talked him back both times and later vowed to walk off the film himself if Miller was fired.
• Producer Jon Peters pushed to work aliens into the story, at one point bringing a stuntman in an alien costume onto the set and telling Miller to use him — Miller and Nicholson walked off until Peters dropped the idea.
• The film's budget swelled to $22 million, and it went on to gross over $103 million worldwide, nearly three times its budget.
• Preview audiences disliked the original ending and reacted so badly to an animatronic vomiting-puppet gag that most of it was cut; Warner Bros. had multiple different endings shot before settling on the theatrical version.
• John Williams' score for the film earned an Academy Award nomination.

Van Horne isn't an external demon but a physical manifestation of the town's collective patriarchal repression, existing only because the women were denied agency.

The final expulsion of Van Horne suggests the women didn't kill him but rather re-absorbed his chaotic energy, accepting their own monstrous potential as part of their identity.

The progressive destruction of Eastwick mirrors the dismantling of traditional domestic roles; the town must burn so the witches can exist outside societal norms.

Three restless women in sleepy Eastwick — a widow, a newly divorced music teacher, and a fertile single mother — manifest their repressed desires into reality, accidentally summoning Daryl Van Horne, a devilish charmer who weaponizes their latent magic. As the trio's powers amplify through hedonistic indulgence, Van Horne isolates them, turning sisterhood into savage rivalry. The town rots under his influence until the witches realize their coven is the only spell strong enough to banish him. Miller swaps horror for dark satire, proving that female rage, once unlocked, burns brighter than hellfire itself.