Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi on the new poster for Wuthering Heights Warner Bros
Wuthering Heights is already one of 2026’s most anticipated film’s releases, but the excitement is only building after the release of the latest trailer and Charli XCX unveiling her first cuts from the movie’s soundtrack.
Saltburn fans are already excited to see how Oscar winner Emerald Fennell has put her unique slant on the classic gothic novel, although it has already come under fire and sparked some controversy for several reasons before anyone has even had the chance to see it.
So, who is actually in the cast of this new take on Wuthering Heights? Why has it been so controversial? And when can we actually expect to see it in cinemas?
Here’s everything you need to know about the much-hyped new movie…
First of all… what actually happens in Wuthering Heights?
Listen, don’t worry if you never got round to actually reading Wuthering Heights. This is a safe space and a judgement-free zone.
Wuthering Heights started out as the only novel of English writer Emily Brontë, and since its publication in the mid-1800s, it’s gone on to become a classic of British literature.
A portrait of Emily Brontë, the author of Wuthering Heights Design Pics Inc/Shutterstock
Set in the Yorkshire moors, the gothic novel effectively follows the life of Heathcliff, who was taken in by the Earnshaw family as an orphaned young boy, and whose markedly different relationships with his new foster brother and sister continue to affect him as he grows into a man.
A central part of the story is Heathcliff and his adopted sister Catherine’s obsessions with each other, which continues long after they’re both married to other people.
Wuthering Heights touches on themes like romance, family relationships, abuse, generational trauma and, most notably, class.
It’s also, for the avoidance of doubt, really great – so if you never got round to checking it out for yourself, we’d very much recommend diving in before the film comes out next year.
Who stars in Wuthering Heights?
The cast seems like as good a place to start with the new film.
In the lead roles of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff are the Australian stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, the former of whom previously executive produced Emerald’s films Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, as well as briefly sharing the screen with Barbie.
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in character as Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights Warner Bros
You will also have seen her in the likes of I, Tonya, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, The Wolf Of Wall Street, Babylon and, indeed, Neighbours.
Jacob first rose to fame as a cast member on Euphoria, and has since gone on to appear in films including Priscilla, The Kissing Booth and Frankenstein, based on another hugely popular Gothic novel.
Last year, he also caused quite the stir alongside Barry Keoghan in the polarising Emerald Fennell movie Saltburn.
Joining them in Wuthering Heights will be Oscar nominee Hong Chau as the servant Nelly Dean (who basically serves as the narrator of the Brontë novel), while Spooks’ Shazad Latif will play Edgar Linton.
Conversations With Friends’ Alison Oliver and British comedy great Martin Clunes also have supporting roles, with House Of The Dragon’s Ewan Mitchell tipped to play a character known simply as “Whip-wielding Man” who we don’t exactly recall from the source material, but we’re intrigued about all the same.
Meanwhile, you look out for Adolescence star (and recent Emmy winner!) Owen Cooper in a minor role as a young Heathcliff in the film.
Wuthering Heights marks the movie debut of Adolescence’s breakout star Owen Cooper Warner Bros
What has Emerald Fennell said about making Wuthering Heights film?
Before she’d even been announced as the director of Wuthering Heights, the filmmaker told The Los Angeles Times: “The gothic world has always had me in its grip. It’s a genre where comedy and horror, revulsion and desire, sex and death are forever entwined, where every exchange is heavy with the threat of violence, or sex or both.”
She later told BBC News that her intention was to make something that made me feel like I felt when I first read it, which means that it’s an emotional response to something”.
“It’s, like, primal, sexual,” Emerald said, noting that when she first discovered the classic book it “cracked me open” due to her “profound connection” to it.
Emerald enthused: “It’s just not like anything else. It’s completely singular. It’s so sexy. It’s so horrible. It’s so devastating.”
The announcement that Emerald was helming the new adaptation was accompanied by an intriguing image emblazoned with the slogan“be with me always – take any form – drive me mad”, while its trailer was accompanied by the tagline: “Come undone!”
Emerald Fennell via Associated Press
Why has Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights movie already been so controversial?
As soon as Jacob Elordi was revealed to be playing Heathcliff, fans of the source material raised questions about the decision to have a white actor portray a character described in the books as “dark-skinned”, who it’s been argued experiences racism and persecution from other figures over the course of the story.
Heathcliff has been portrayed by white actors in various other prominent Wuthering Heights adaptations, while Emerald said she cast Jacob because he “looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff” in the book she read as a teen.
Jacob Elordi’s casting as Heathcliff has led to accusations of “whitewashing” Warner Bros
On a less serious note, some critics have also raised issues about some of the actors’ ages, as well as the historical accuracy of some of the costumes depicted in imagery from the film so far.
Responding to this, casting director Kharmel Cochrane was quoted by Deadline as saying: “Just wait till you see it, and then you can decide whether you want to shoot me or not. But you really don’t need to be accurate. It’s just a book. That is not based on real life. It’s all art.
“There’s definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy.”
“Wait until you see the set design, because that is even more shocking,” she teased. “And there may or may not be a dog collar in it.”
It should perhaps be noted that all references to the film in its official materials refer to it as “Wuthering Heights” in quotation marks, meaning that Emerald perhaps has more up her sleeve than she’s letting on…
What do critics think of Wuthering Heights so far, and are there any reviews out right now?
Critics haven’t had the opportunity to screen the film yet, so there are no official reviews.
However, over the summer, it was reported that test audiences in Dallas, Texas had been given a first-look at the film, and if you watched Saltburn, it mightn’t surprise you to hear that Emerald’s take on Wuthering Heights sounds absolutely wild.
An article published in World Of Reel described the movie as “far more explicit than any previous adaptation” of Brontë’s work, specifically naming an opening scene in which a hanged man ejaculates mid-execution “sending the onlooking crowd into a kind of orgiastic frenzy”, with a nun even getting hands-on with the man’s body after he’s killed.
The film is reported to include multiple sequences of masturbation, as well as a stand-out scene in which a woman is “strapped into a horse’s reins for a BDSM-tinged encounter”.
It was also described as leaning into the “shock value” of its director’s previous big-screen offerings, with terms like “aggressively provocative”, “tonally abrasive” and “deliberately unromantic” being thrown around.
As if we weren’t intrigued enough already…
And what’s this about a new Charli XCX album to coincide with Wuthering Heights’ release, too?
The first teaser for Wuthering Heights was accompanied by a snippet of Charli XCX’s Everything Is Romantic, but it turns out the British singer has an even bigger part to play in the film’s release.
Earlier this month, she unveiled the (frankly, deeply weird) John Cale collaboration House, taken from the film’s soundtrack, followed by the decidedly more listenable Chains Of Love, which can be heard in the movie’s second trailer.
Charli XCX via Associated Press
Charli has published a lengthy piece on Substack explaining what she’s got in store for fans with her follow-up to her hit Brat album, in which she wrote: “In early December 2024, I got a text from an unknown number that turned out to be Emerald Fennell. We had previously shared the same glam team and had met once at a party in a house by the Chateau Marmont but other than that our paths hadn’t really crossed.
“The text felt out of the blue but obviously intriguing. I had heard through the grapevine that she was making an adaptation of Wuthering Heights and so when she sent me the script to read I devoured it instantly. I was in London at the time, it was freezing and miserable and getting dark at around 4pm, which felt fitting.
“I began to sink into this reimagined world of Wuthering Heights and I suddenly began to feel… inspired. I was immersing myself in a story that was not my own, a story that was steeped in history, a story that had existed since 1847 (tysm Emily Brontë). I was purely a voyeur and I was enjoying being one. The language of this world felt so opposite from the world I had been inhabiting for the past two and a half years. I began to feel a sense of freedom again.”
Charli continued: “I called Emerald and asked her what she was hoping for from my read of the script. She coyly suggested ‘A song?’ and I suggested ‘An album?’ because why not?
“I wanted to dive into persona, into a world that felt undeniably raw, wild, sexual, gothic, British, tortured and full of actual real sentences, punctuation and grammar. Without a cigarette or a pair of sunglasses in sight, it was all totally other from the life I was currently living. I was fucking IN.”
She also said more about Chains Of Love in a post shared on her official social media pages:
What other adaptations of Wuthering Heights exist?
Arguably the most famous adaptation of Wuthering Heights was created in the mid-1960s, with Ian McShane and Angela Scoular in the lead roles.
It was, in fact, this TV series – rather than the book – which served as the inspiration for Kate Bush’s 1978 chart-topping hit which was also named Wuthering Heights.
Decades later, Tom Hardy played Heathcliffe in a 2009 version of Wuthering Heights produced by ITV, with Charlotte Riley as his Catherine Earnshaw.
As for film adaptations, the most recent was in 2011, with Kaya Scodelario and James Howson in the lead roles. This is one of the few instances of an actor of colour being cast as Heathcliff, despite the many references to the character’s race in the source material.
James Howson in 2011’s Wuthering Heights Ecosse/Kobal/Shutterstock
When does Wuthering Heights come out?
Warner Bros recently said that because the new Wuthering Heights film was “inspired by the greatest love story of all time” (very, very debatable…), it would be hitting cinemas in time for Valentine’s Day, with its UK release falling on Wednesday 11 February 2026.
Is there a trailer for the new Wuthering Heights film?
There certainly is. Enjoy!
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