Wuthering Heights (2026 film)

• 1. A Teenage Reader's Feeling

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  The 2026 film Wuthering Heights is a romantic period drama that Emerald Fennell produced, wrote and directed. It is only loosely based on the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë. Fennell did not set out to make a faithful retelling. Her stated aim was to "recreate the feeling of a teenage girl reading this book for the first time." That is an unusual promise for an adaptation, because it measures success by a reader's emotions rather than by loyalty to the page. What does a film look like when it chases a feeling instead of a plot? Why would its maker put punctuation around her own title? And what happened when audiences and critics finally met the result?

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• 2. Quotation Marks

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  Fennell believes the title of any adaptation of a novel belongs inside quotation marks, and she applied that rule to her own film. She explained her reasoning bluntly: "The thing for me is that you can't adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book. I can't say I'm making Wuthering Heights. It's not possible. What I can say is I'm making a version of it." The lettering also nods to film history. Chips, a design studio based in Brooklyn, New York, built the title treatment from a poster for the 1920 adaptation starring Milton Rosmer.

  On the 3rd of September 2025, the first trailer and poster appeared online. Promotional billboards had already gone up in several cities, including New York City, London and Los Angeles. The poster paid homage to Gone with the Wind, the 1939 film.

  Thirteen films are on the list of influences that Fennell named. She said she rewatched favorite love stories that "challenged, subverted, even obliterated the conventions of the genre." Her list runs from Random Harvest (1942) and A Matter of Life and Death (1946) to Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and Donkey Skin (1970). It continues with The Night Porter (1974), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Crash (1996) and Romeo + Juliet (1996). It ends with The End of the Affair (1999), Romance (1999), Bluebeard (2009), The Handmaiden (2016) and The Beguiled (2017). The story all those films served opens on the Yorkshire Moors.

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• 3. Cathy and Heathcliff

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  Mr. Earnshaw arrives at his estate, Wuthering Heights, with a boy he rescued off the streets. He introduces the child to his daughter, Cathy, and to her companion, Nelly Dean. Cathy becomes protective of the boy and names him Heathcliff. The two grow inseparable.

  By adulthood, the estate has fallen into disrepair because Mr. Earnshaw's alcoholism and gambling keep getting worse. Cathy sets her sights on a new neighbor, the wealthy textile merchant Edgar Linton. She hopes to escape the bleak house and to lift the servant Heathcliff into high society. Heathcliff is jealous and disapproves. Both of them are also beginning to realise they love each other, though Cathy at first shuns the idea.

  One day Cathy sprains her ankle while spying on Edgar and his ward, Isabella. The Lintons take her in for six weeks to heal. Edgar is smitten and proposes, and she accepts. Cathy then confides her guilt to Nelly and implies that Nelly could not understand, since she "never loved anyone." Provoked, Nelly manipulates Cathy into saying that marrying Heathcliff would degrade her, knowing he is listening outside. Heathcliff leaves before Cathy confesses her love for him. He wrongly believes she does not care, and he rides away on horseback. By the next day Cathy has changed her mind about Edgar, but Heathcliff is gone.

  A year later, Cathy marries Edgar after all and lives lavishly at their home, Thrushcross Grange. She secretly longs for Heathcliff. Five years after he left, he returns well-groomed and wealthy, but bitter and angry. He considers marrying Isabella to make Cathy jealous. He buys Wuthering Heights from Mr. Earnshaw, who dies soon after. Cathy, by now pregnant with Edgar's child, finds comfort in Heathcliff, and the two begin an intense romantic and sexual affair.

  Cathy realizes that Nelly knew Heathcliff was listening, and she tries to banish Nelly from the Grange. Nelly responds by revealing the affair to Edgar, who forbids Cathy from seeing Heathcliff. When Cathy tells Heathcliff about her pregnancy, he claims not to mind. He offers to kill Edgar, Cathy rejects the idea, and she sends him away. Furious, Heathcliff elopes with Isabella, who understands his motives. He then degrades her and treats her like a dog, a scene Nelly witnesses when she visits Wuthering Heights.

  Cathy, depressed over his marriage, locks herself in her room and starves herself. Heathcliff secretly sends her love letters, but Nelly deliberately intercepts them, so Cathy believes he has abandoned her. Her pregnancy ends in a miscarriage that becomes septicemic. Realizing how grave the situation is, Nelly rescues Isabella and tells Heathcliff that Cathy is dying. He rides frantically to the Grange and finds that she has already died. Holding her body, he begs her to drive him insane and never to give him peace for as long as he lives.

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• 4. Casting the Leads

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  In September 2024, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi were cast as Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. Robbie also produced the film through her label, LuckyChap Entertainment, together with the financer MRC. She had produced Fennell's earlier films Promising Young Woman (2020) and Saltburn (2023), and Elordi had starred in the second of them. Elordi had been contemplating a hiatus from acting when Fennell offered him the lead role without an audition.

  The choice of a white actor for Heathcliff sparked controversy. The novel describes the character as a "dark-skinned gipsy" or a "Lascar" and never states his origins clearly. It floats a "China princess" as a possible mother and calls him a "Spanish castaway." In September 2025, Fennell defended her decision to cast Elordi, whom the source describes as a Basque-descended actor. She said he "looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read."

  In November 2024, Hong Chau, Alison Oliver and Shazad Latif joined the cast as Nelly Dean, Isabella Linton and Edgar Linton. Oliver had also starred in Saltburn. Martin Clunes plays Mr. Earnshaw, and Ewan Mitchell plays the servant Joseph.

  In March 2025, the younger versions of the leads were announced. Charlotte Mellington plays young Cathy, Owen Cooper plays young Heathcliff, and Vy Nguyen plays young Nelly. All three were making their film debuts. Robbie's role as producer would soon matter in a negotiation over who got to release the film.

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• 5. A Bidding War

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  In October, a bidding war over the distribution rights pushed Netflix to offer $150 million. Warner Bros. Pictures won the film with a far lower offer of $80 million. The difference came down to what Fennell and Robbie wanted. They asked for a theatrical release and a significant marketing campaign, and Warner Bros. agreed to both.

  The studio was not a stranger to the producers. LuckyChap holds a first-look deal with Warner Bros. Pictures, and the two had already made Barbie, released in 2023. That history gave the smaller bid a head start against a streaming giant's larger check. Cameras would start rolling in January 2025.

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• 6. Moors on Film

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  During the first week of filming, Elordi stepped back against a steaming hot brass knob while taking a shower and gave himself a second degree burn. He had to go to the hospital. The accident came early in a shoot that lasted 50 days, running from mid-January to late March 2025 in the United Kingdom.

  The Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren shot the film on 35mm and VistaVision cameras. It was his second collaboration with Fennell, after Saltburn. He framed the film in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. His main cameras were 3-perf 35mm Aaton Penelopes. A pair of Beaumont 8-perf VistaVision cameras handled the wide shots and landscapes.

  Interior work took place at Sky Studios Elstree. Location shooting moved to the Yorkshire Dales, including the valleys of Arkengarthdale and Swaledale and the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The village of Low Row also served as a location.

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• 7. The Sound of the Film

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  Anthony Willis composed the score for Wuthering Heights, having worked with Fennell before on Saltburn. Charli XCX contributed an album of original songs. The lead single, "House," features the Welsh musician John Cale. It was released on the 10th of November 2025 with a music video directed by Mitch Ryan.

  A second song, "Chains of Love," came out on the 13th of November 2025. That was the day the theatrical trailer arrived, and the trailer featured the song. Two more singles followed. "Wall of Sound" was released on the 16th of January 2026, and "Always Everywhere" came out on the 13th of February 2026, the same day as the full album.

  The music and the marketing drew awards attention. The American Music Awards, on the 25th of May 2026, listed the album under Charli XCX in the Best Soundtrack category. The Golden Trailer Awards, on the 28th of May 2026, listed the film's TV spots, teasers and social campaign across many categories. The Guild of Music Supervisors Awards, on the 28th of February 2026, listed Deric Berberabe and Jordan Silverberg for music supervision on the official teaser.

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• 8. Release and Reception

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  Wuthering Heights had its world premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, California, on the 28th of January 2026. Warner Bros. Pictures released it in the United Kingdom and the United States on the 13th of February 2026, on the eve of Valentine's Day. An IMAX release was also planned. Digital streaming followed on the 31st of March 2026. The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD editions arrived on the 5th of May 2026.

  The opening weekend was projected at $50-55 million from 3,600 theaters over the four-day Presidents' Day weekend. The film opened alongside Crime 101, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, and Goat. It earned $11 million on its first day, including $3 million from previews. It then debuted at $37.5 million, which topped the box office but fell below expectations. In its second weekend it took $14.2 million and finished second behind Goat. By then it had grossed 152 million dollars worldwide. It finished with $84 million in the United States and Canada and $158 million in other territories. That made $242 million worldwide and the seventh-highest grossing film of 2026.

  Critics were mixed. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave an average grade of "B" on a scale from A+ to F. David Sims of The Atlantic called it a "heaving, rip-snortingly carnal good time." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it "an emotionally hollow, bodice-ripping misfire."

  Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that "Fennell boxes herself in." He argued that an intense sex life for Cathy and Heathcliff leaves the story with no next step. In his view, the film gives away the story's spiritual and sexual longing without gaining anything. Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail was unmoved by the carefully composed shots of aspic-entombed prawns and oversized glazed strawberries. He said they could not hide the gaps elsewhere on screen. Sarah Chihaya of The Nation wrote that the film ignored "the novel's very real and present concerns with class, race, and heredity."

  Caryn James of the BBC took the opposite view. She wrote that "its excesses are a small price to pay for such ambition." She defended the liberties Fennell took with a short reminder: "the book still exists."

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