To the Wuthering Heights moors we go. Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie are our new Heathcliff and Cathy, the lovers in Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic gothic novel. Here’s everything we know about the project:
What is Wuthering Heights about?
Ask your English teacher! JK. Published in 1847, the novel is a brutal and passionate love story between a Byronic antihero (Heathcliff) and Catherine Earnshaw, his forbidden, well-born love. No spoilers, but lotta jealousy, lotta death.
Who is making the “Wuthering Heights” movie?
Promising Young Woman scribe Emerald Fennell wrote and directed the sinema, which was produced by Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment.
From left: Tom Ackerley, Margot Robbie, Archie Madekwe, Barry Keoghan, Emerald Fennell, Sue Kroll, Paul Rhys, Jennifer Salke, Jacob Elordi, Julie Rapaport, Josey McNamara, Carey Mulligan, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Latasha Gillespie, and Anthony Willis at the premiere of Saltburn held at The Theatre at Ace Hotel on November 14, 2023, in Los Angeles.
Variety/Getty Images
Who is in the cast?
Jacob Elordi, who previously starred in Fennell’s Saltburn, leads the cast opposite Margot Robbie. Alison Oliver, Shazad Latif, Hong Chau, and Owen Cooper—the breakout star of Netflix’s Adolescence—also star.
Robbie, who helped produce Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, hinted that she might be going in front of Fennell’s camera in a January 2024 interview, telling Deadline that she “would love to” star in an Emerald Fennell sinema and explaining, “It’s a real act of self-control not to snatch up all the roles with her scripts, because all of them are so delicious.… I also definitely never want to hold up a production. When Emerald has got a script ready to go, it’s ready to go. It’s not development. It’s not like, ‘Oh, in a year and a half, we’ll start piecing this together.’ So, unless that lines up perfectly, I’m not going to be the person that holds it up.” This time, things did line up.
In her January 2026 British Vogue cover story, Robbie noted that she didn’t “want Emerald to feel like she had to say yes” to casting her in the role, though she was immediately drawn to the character in Fennell’s script. “I both understood her and didn’t, in a way that drew me to her. It’s this puzzle you have to work out.”
What is the casting controversy?
There was some initial uproar about the casting, specifically of the two leads. Some fans believed Robbie to be too “modern looking” (take that as you will) and Elordi to be a whitewashed Heathcliff, who is described as “dark-skinned” in the book.
The two addressed the backlash in Robbie’s British Vogue cover story, published on December 4. Fennell confirmed that the film’s Cathy is older—“in her mid-20s to early 30s”—than the teenage Cathy of the book.
Robbie also defended Elordi’s Heathcliff, telling writer Radhika Seth, “I saw him play Heathcliff. And he is Heathcliff. I’d say, just wait. Trust me, you’ll be happy. It’s a character that has this lineage of other great actors who’ve played him, from Laurence Olivier to Richard Burton and Ralph Fiennes to Tom Hardy. To be a part of that is special. He’s incredible and I believe in him so much. I honestly think he’s our generation’s Daniel Day-Lewis.”
Fennell added that the idea to cast Elordi began when they worked together on Saltburn, and the actor was sporting early ’00s sideburns. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s the Heathcliff on the cover of the book that I’ve had since I was a teenager.”
When is “Wuthering Heights” coming out?
The sinema will be released in theaters on February 13, 2026, which happens to be a Friday. Honestly, it feels pretty poignant to release the sinema on both a Friday the 13th and Valentine’s Day weekend.
Is there a trailer?
On September 3, Warner Bros. released a very erotic teaser trailer. Set to Charli XCX’s “Everything Is Romantic” remix featuring Caroline Polachek, the teaser trailer gives viewers a sense of Fennell’s incredibly sensual interpretation of the classic. Scored by Charli XCX, the sinema is clearly intended as a tongue-in-cheek take on the Victorian classic, which is set several decades before it was published in 1847.
The stunning sets and wardrobes are a mix of old and new—at one point we see Robbie’s Catherine wearing rose-colored sunglasses—making it clear that this isn’t a rigidly faithful adaptation. Which is good news for fans of Saltburn’s rich scenery, which was deftly portrayed by Fennell.
A full-length trailer dropped on November 13:
What’s the controversy about the sinema?
The marketing for the sinema has received mixed reviews from fans. In the YouTube comments of the teaser, many Brontë loyalists bemoaned that the adaptation appeared to be all sexual tension and innuendo shots of fingers in fish mouths, when the actual book was more Victorian yearning.
“I fear they’re making it extremely sensual and provocative for shock value when the book had none of that at all,” wrote one user. Others pointed to the fact that the title is displayed with quotation marks, a clear signal that the source material is simply inspiration, not an exact playbook. Later, Robbie confirmed that the adaptation would be more in the style of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet than a one-for-one retelling.
The sinema poster is even modeled in the style of a paperback romance novel, seeming to imply that the bodice ripping we see in the teaser would go further than violent exhalations and sexually aggressive stares. However, in her British Vogue interview, Robbie said that the sinema is more romantic than erotic, focusing less on the explicit and more on what read as sexy and exciting to “two women in our 30s.” As an example, she recalled a scene in which Heathcliff picks up Cathy with one arm and shields her eyes from the rain with the other, which made Robbie “weak at the knees.”
“It’s not just a sex position or someone taking their shirt off,” said Robbie. “This is a big epic romance…. It’s that feeling when your chest swells or it’s like someone’s punched you in the guts and the air leaves your body. That’s a signature of Emerald’s. Whether it’s titillating or repulsion, her superpower is eliciting a physical response.”
Fennell, too, underscored the importance of capturing the visceral experience she had when reading the book at 14. “It kind of got inside me,” she said of the source material.
