Wuthering Heights (2026 film)

"Wuthering Heights" (stylized with quotation marks) is a 2026 romantic period drama film produced, written and directed by Emerald Fennell. Loosely based on the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, the film is a reinterpretation intended by Fennell to "recreate the feeling of a teenage girl reading this book for the first time".^[5] Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi respectively star as Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, alongside Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, and Ewan Mitchell in supporting roles.

"Wuthering Heights" premiered at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, California on January 28, 2026, and was released in the United Kingdom and United States by Warner Bros. Pictures on February 13. The film received mixed reviews from critics, but has achieved box office success, grossing $234 million worldwide, becoming the third-highest grossing-film of 2026.^[6]

In a fantasized setting loosely based on XVIII-XIX century Yorkshire, a man is publicly hanged; his suffering and visible erection send spectators, including Catherine Earnshaw and her companion Nelly Dean, into an ecstatic frenzy. Cathy's father, the abrasive, alcoholic Mr. Earnshaw, returns to his Gothic, windswept estate of Wuthering Heights on the moors with a young boy he rescued off the Liverpool streets to be, in his words, Cathy's "pet". She names him "Heathcliff" and the two kids form a strong bond in the context of the harsh and abusive houshold they live in.

When the kids enter adulthood, they still live in Wuthering Heights, which has fallen into disrepair due to Earnshaw's worsening alcoholism and gambling habits. A new neighbor arrives at Thrushscross Grange, the wealthy textile merchant Edgar Linton with his ward Isabella, and Cathy starts dreaming that if he fell in love and marry her, this could help her escape Wuthering Heights' bleak environment and dire finantial situation. She falls and sprains her ankle while spying on the Lintons, and is taken in for some time to heal. She returns attired and acting as a lady, polished by the shining and civilized world of the Grange and appreciation of the Lintons. Edgar in particular is smitten by Cathy and proposes marriage, which she accepts. While she's reasoning with Nelly about her choice though, Heathcliff overhears her saying that a marriage with him would degrade her and, disraught by that, he rides away from the Heights to never return, missing her profession of love for him.

Years later, Cathy and Edgar are married, and they live a lavish lifestyle at the Grange, where his best textiles are used for the most extravagant decor, including a skin colored wallpaper and a dollshouse that is an exact replica of the Grange, with dolls that mirror exactly its inhabitants with their real hair and dresses, giving a fever-dream like feel to their lives. Heathcliff suddenly returns, mysteriously rich and a gentleman, buys Wuthering Heights and lives there with Mr. Earnshaw, who dies of alcoholism soon after. Cathy and Heathcliff turns lovers and become involved in a passionate affair, but when her pregnancy of Edgar's child is discovered, she wants to end it. As an act of revenge, Heathcliff enters into a loveless, BDSM relationship with Isabella, who had previously stated her infatuation with him with little success, and she seems to gladly accept the terms of their marriage, in stark contrast to her previous way of life.

Heathcliff has Isabella send Cathy letters to get her attention, but she never receives them because Nelly burns them. The last time Cathy and Heathcliff had sex, he, enraged and possibly envious of her pregnancy, threatened to kill Edgar. Cathy rejected, but suffered a miscarriage that went untreated because she was not believed by Nelly when she expressed her worries. She becomes septicemic and dies because of it, leaving only her leeches-covered corpse to hold to a desparate Heathcliff, who came to the Grange invited by Nelly and an equally distraught Edgar. Isabella is forcibly taken away from her dog-like life at the Heights.

• Margot Robbie as Catherine "Cathy" Earnshaw
  • Charlotte Mellington as young Cathy

• Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff
  • Owen Cooper as young Heathcliff

• Hong Chau as Nelly Dean
  • Vy Nguyen as young Nelly

• Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton
• Alison Oliver as Isabella Linton
• Martin Clunes as Mr. Earnshaw
• Ewan Mitchell as Joseph
• Amy Morgan as Zillah
• Jessica Knappett as Mrs. Burton
• Millie Kent as Jane
• Vicki Pepperdine as Sister Mercy
• Paul Rhys as Heathcliff's father

In July 2024, filmmaker Emerald Fennell announced that she would write and direct an adaptation of the 1847 novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.^[7] In September 2024, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi were cast as Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, respectively, with Robbie also producing under her label LuckyChap Entertainment alongside financer MRC. Robbie previously produced Fennell's Promising Young Woman (2020) and Saltburn (2023), the latter of which starred Elordi.^[8] For her approach to adapting Brontë's novel, Fennell decided against a faithful retelling of its story, stating that her main intention was to "try and recreate the feeling of a teenage girl reading this book for the first time".^[5]

A bidding war in October led Netflix to bid $150 million for the distribution rights.^[9] Warner Bros. Pictures, with whom LuckyChap has a first-look deal and made Barbie (2023), ultimately won the rights with a significantly lower offer of $80 million after granting Fennell and Robbie's wishes for the film to have a theatrical release and a significant marketing campaign.^[10][9]

Elordi had been contemplating taking a hiatus from acting before Fennell offered him the lead role without having to audition.^[11] The decision to cast a white actor as the racially ambiguous Heathcliff, described as a "dark-skinned gipsy" or "Lascar" in the novel, sparked controversy.^[12], though Heathcliff provenance is never clearly stated, a "China princess" is cited in the novel as a possible mother and he's called a "Spanish castaway"^[13], more to generate confusion about the mysteryous byronic hero, and manifest the remoteness of the village by showing how little they know of the world, than to state an actual ethnicity. In September 2025, Fennell defended her decision to cast the Basque-ascending actor Elordi, stating that he "looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read."^[14] In November 2024, Hong Chau, Alison Oliver (who starred in Saltburn), and Shazad Latif joined the cast.^[15] In March 2025, Charlotte Mellington, Owen Cooper, and Vy Nguyen (all three making their film debuts) were announced as playing young Catherine, Heathcliff, and Nelly.^[16]

Principal photography took place in the United Kingdom during 50 days, from mid-January to late March 2025.^[17] Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren shot the film using 35mm and VistaVision cameras,^[17] marking his second collaboration with Fennell following Saltburn (2023). Sandgren framed the film in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio, using 3-perf 35mm Aaton Penelopes as the main cameras, plus a pair of Beaumont 8-perf VistaVision cameras for wides and landscapes.^[17]

Filming occurred at Sky Studios Elstree, with location shooting in the Yorkshire Dales including the valleys of Arkengarthdale and Swaledale, the village of Low Row, and the Yorkshire Dales National Park.^[18][19][20] Linus Sandgren was the cinematographer.^[21] During the first week of filming, Elordi accidentally gave himself a second degree burn when he stepped back against a steaming hot brass knob while taking a shower and had to go to the hospital.^[22]

Anthony Willis composed the score for the film, after having worked with Fennell on Saltburn, with Charli XCX contributing an album of original songs.^[23][24] The lead single, "House" featuring Welsh musician John Cale, was released on November 10, 2025,^[25] alongside a music video directed by Mitch Ryan.^[26] A second song, "Chains of Love", was released on November 13, coinciding with the film's theatrical trailer, which also featured the song.^[24] Two further singles were released, "Wall of Sound" on January 16, 2026,^[27] and "Always Everywhere" on February 13, the same day as the album.^[28]

In preparation for creating Wuthering Heights, Fennell rewatched some of her "favorite 'love stories', ones that challenged, subverted, even obliterated the conventions of the genre". The films listed by Fennell as influences for Wuthering Heights were Random Harvest (1942), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Donkey Skin (1970), The Night Porter (1974), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Crash (1996), Romeo + Juliet (1996), The End of the Affair (1999), Romance (1999), Bluebeard (2009), The Handmaiden (2016), and The Beguiled (2017).^[29]

The film's first trailer and poster, the latter of which paid homage to Gone with the Wind (1939), were released online on September 3, 2025, after promotional billboards appeared in multiple cities, including New York City, London, and Los Angeles.^[30] The film's title treatment was designed by Chips, a design studio based in Brooklyn, New York. It is based on a poster from an earlier adaptation Wuthering Heights (1920), starring Milton Rosmer.^[31]

The film's title is stylized with quotation marks. Fennell stated that "any adaptation of a novel" should be enclosed in quotation marks: "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."^[32] On January 20, 2026, Elordi and Robbie were announced as the cover stars of Vogue Australia's February 2026 issue.^[33]

On January 28, 2026, Wuthering Heights had its world premiere at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre.^[34] Wuthering Heights was released in the United States and the United Kingdom on February 13, 2026, on the eve of Valentine's Day.^[35] It is slated to release in IMAX cinemas.^[36]

As of March 22, 2026, Wuthering Heights has grossed $83 million in the United States and Canada, and $151 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $234 million.^[4]

In the United States and Canada, Wuthering Heights was released alongside Crime 101, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, and Goat, and was projected to gross $50–55 million from 3,600 theaters in its four-day opening weekend.^[2] The film grossed $11 million on its first day, including $3 million in previews.^[37] It went on to debut at $37.5 million over the four-day Presidents' Day weekend, topping the box office but finishing below expectations.^[38] In its second weekend, the film grossed $14.2 million, finishing second place behind Goat.^[39]

Wuthering Heights was met with mixed reviews from critics.^[40][41] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 57% of 333 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "Liberally adapting Emily Brontë's classic story with a heavy dose of carnality and chic stylization, Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights might not be the stuff of high literature but it is a visually vibrant pleasure."^[42] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 55 out of 100, based on 59 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.^[43] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.^[44]

David Sims of The Atlantic called Wuthering Heights a "heaving, rip-snortingly carnal good time".^[45] By contrast, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described the film as "an emotionally hollow, bodice-ripping misfire".^[46] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle concluded, "Fennell boxes herself in. By giving Cathy and Heathcliff an intense sex life, she gets them ready for the next step, but there can't be [one], because this is Wuthering Heights. ... So she gives away all the story's power of spiritual and sexual longing without gaining a thing."^[47] Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail stated that "no amount of meticulously composed shots trained on aspic-entombed prawns or freakishly large glazed strawberries can distract from the gaping holes in absolutely everything else on the screen, including its frequently drenched stars".^[48] Sarah Chihaya of The Nation wrote that the film ignored "the novel’s very real and present concerns with class, race, and heredity".^[49]

• Official website
• Wuthering Heights at IMDb