The new Wuthering Heights movie trailer is here, and if you thought Emily Brontë’s Gothic masterpiece was safe from Hollywood’s horny hands, think again. Emerald Fennell, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker behind Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, has decided to give the tragic love story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff a very different makeover.
Set for release on Valentine’s Day 2026, Warner Bros. is clearly swinging for “provocative Gothic event movie.” The film stars Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, with Robbie also producing through her LuckyChap banner. In an interview with IndieWire, Elordi admitted, “I was going to take a break for a while, and then Emerald just very simply texted me, and you can’t run from that text.” Of working alongside Robbie, he called her “a livewire” and said, “She’s a beautiful actor and she gave so, so much.”
But not everyone is feeling the love. Social media has been buzzing, and it’s not with swoons. One X user wrote: “Wuthering Heights with 35 yo Catherine, the whitewashed version of Heathcliff. Original music by Charli XCX. Emily Brontë did not die for this sh**.” Another added: “So they made Heathcliff white, catherine blonde, and added BDSM?? This isn’t Wuthering Heights lol.”
The backlash makes sense when you watch the teaser. It starts like you’d expect: sweeping shots of the Yorkshire Moors, a stately manor house, a close-up of Margot Robbie looking wistful. Then, in quick succession: hands kneading bread, fingers sliding into mouths, horse tack doubling as BDSM gear, and yes, a finger poking inside a fish. Add Charli XCX’s “Everything Is Romantic” over the top, and it’s clear this isn’t your grandma’s Wuthering Heights.
Fennell herself has never been shy about her love for the Gothic. In a Los Angeles Times piece earlier this year, she wrote, “I’ve always been obsessed with the gothic. Whether it was Edward Gorey’s children who are variously choked by peaches, sucked dry by leeches or smothered by rugs; Du Maurier’s imperilled heroines or the disturbing erotic power of Angela Carter’s fairy tales, the gothic world has always had me in its grip.”
Still, long-time fans aren’t completely convinced. One comment summed up the frustration: “Sure, take a dark, complicated and conflicted tale of love on the isolated moors, and turn it into a simplistic mush of lust for six-pack abs. The dumbing down of civilization continues.”
Of course, it’s not the first time a Wuthering Heights movie has had pushback from audiences. There have been at least four major adaptations (1939, 1970, 1992, and 2011), and none of them has ever been considered definitive. So, there has always been room for a new interpretation. The real question is whether audiences are ready for this unapologetically explicit.
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