Brontë’s only novel, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, has already been adapted into at least 14 versions across film and television, to date. Yet Fennell, known for her audacious and unsettling vision in Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, appears ready to rip up the rulebook.
Her adaptation, set to release 14 February 2026, is already sparking debate. Early whispers describe it as daring, erotic, and unapologetically confrontational - a far cry from the traditional period romance that many Brontë fans appear to have hoped for. If the online storm the new teaser has provoked is any indication, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is set to divide audiences long before it ever reaches the big screen.
If Fennell’s previous projects weren’t enough to convince you what kind of film this will be, Charli XCX’s involvement should. The teaser, soundtracked by Everything is Romantic by Charli herself, immediately sets the tone: gothic melodrama refracted through a hyper-modern, hyper-sexual lens. We open on the Yorkshire moors, windswept and dramatic, before cutting to Margot Robbie laced into a corset as Catherine and Jacob Elordi glowering under heavy hair as Heathcliff. Within seconds, it’s clear this isn’t your grandmother’s Wuthering Heights.
That said, Brontë’s novel has always been a brutal, unsettling piece of work - violent obsession, generational spite, love curdled into cruelty. But where some fans hoped Fennell might lean into the text’s raw darkness, the trailer suggests she’s channeling the same surreal, grotesque energy that made Saltburn infamous. And it’s already dividing opinion.
The loudest complaints so far have circled Elordi’s Heathcliff. On the page, Heathcliff is described as having ambiguous origins and “dark” features - an essential element of his character. In recent decades, many adaptations have leaned into this by casting actors of colour. By choosing a white actor, Fennell has reignited long-standing debates about representation, even if Hollywood history is full of white Heathcliffs, from Laurence Olivier to Tom Hardy.
Robbie as Catherine, meanwhile, has raised eyebrows for other reasons. The Cathy of the novel is wild, barely out of her teens, and hardly glamorous. Robbie, at 35, not only reads older but also appears in the trailer with her trademark blonde hair rather than Cathy’s darker, untamed look. The age gap isn’t massive compared to her co-star, but when paired with the film’s overtly sensual tone, the casting feels like a deliberate departure from Brontë’s vision.
Then there’s the imagery. The trailer is, frankly, filthy - in a stylish, unsettling way. Eroticised bread-kneading, dripping egg yolks, fingers shoved into mouths, even a bizarre moment with a frozen fish. Elordi spends much of it shirtless and sweat-slicked, while Robbie heaves and smoulders in ways that feel closer to music video than costume drama. It’s grotesque, it’s visceral, and it’s bound to polarise.
Of course, Wuthering Heights has always been horny - but in a repressed, Victorian sense. Fennell seems intent on ripping away the subtext, replacing longing glances with literal gropes and food fetishes. For some, that will be deliciously audacious. For others, it will feel like a betrayal of the novel’s simmering restraint.
The costume choices have already drawn scorn from period purists. Set photos of Robbie in a plunging white wedding gown sparked particular outrage: in the early 1800s, brides simply wore their best dress, often in colour, and rarely with décolletage on display. The trailer doubles down, blending historically “off” looks with surreal, dreamlike imagery - blood-red floors, powder-blue walls, pearls spilling from painted mouths.
It’s obvious that Fennell isn’t aiming for accuracy. Like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette or Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, she’s creating a heightened, modernised vision of a classic story. The question is whether this approach will capture the novel’s wild, destructive passion, or reduce it to aesthetic chaos.
One thing is certain: Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is already one of the most talked-about films of the year (and the year hasn't even begun). And if the furious debates online are any indicator, its reception will be just as stormy as the moors themselves.