“Saltburn” and “Promising Young Woman” filmmaker Emerald Fennell brings her skill to a new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s legendary 1847 novel “Wuthering Heights” next year.
Considered one of the greatest novels of English literature, the story concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors and the turbulent relationship between the Earnshaws’ actual daughter, Catherine (Margot Robbie) and their foster son, Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) – a toxic relationship throughout the work with moments of cruelty and domestic abuse.
It’s expected the film will have all of Fennell’s now signature tone of provocation, but many have wondered how that will gel with Bronte’s style. A recent reissue of the novel has included a new foreword penned by Fennell in which she explains the film is more her adaptation of her own fever dream-ish memory of what it was like when she first read the book:
“It is too slippery, too wild, too good to distil into two hours of film. Instead, what I have attempted to do is adapt my own experience of reading it for the first time. It is an adaptation of a feeling: my first disembowelling by the baby god.”
It follows on from comments the other month to The Guardian esrlier this year when she said:
“It’s an emotional response to something. It’s primal, sexual. There’s an enormous amount of sado-masochism in this book. There’s a reason people were deeply shocked by it”
She added at the time that adapting it is “kind of masochistic exercise… because I love it so much, and it can’t love me back, and I have to live with that.” Alison Oliver, Owen Cooper and Hong Chau co-star, while musician Charli XCX will provide original music for the film.
The new “Wuthering Heights” opens in cinemas on February 13th 2026.
Source: THR
