Emerald Fennell’s new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights has arrived in theaters, and it’s already causing quite a stir. Released on February 13, 2026, this vibrant, polarizing take on Emily Brontë’s iconic novel has critics and fans alike debating what, if anything, remains of the original’s gothic soul. Fennell, known for her visually bold work in Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, has never shied away from controversy. But with Wuthering Heights, she’s taken liberties that have both delighted and infuriated audiences, depending on whom you ask.
From the outset, Fennell made it clear that her intention was not to deliver a faithful recreation of Brontë’s 1847 classic. In interviews, she described her film as a version “with quotation marks around it,” a kind of half-remembered fantasy inspired by her own teenage reading of the book. “I can’t say I’m making Wuthering Heights. It’s not possible,” Fennell told Fandango. “What I can say is I’m making a version of it. There’s a version that I remembered reading that isn’t quite real. And there’s a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so it is ‘Wuthering Heights,’ and it isn’t.”
This philosophy is evident in nearly every frame of the film. Gone are many of the novel’s pivotal characters—Hindley, Cathy Linton, Linton Heathcliff, and Hareton Earnshaw are all erased, along with the generational trauma that forms the backbone of Brontë’s narrative. Instead, the film focuses almost exclusively on the doomed romance between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, respectively.
The casting choices themselves have been a lightning rod for controversy. As reported by Collider and Mashable, fans were quick to point out that Robbie, best known for her roles in Barbie and I, Tonya, appears too old for Cathy—a character traditionally depicted as a wild, headstrong young woman. Elordi, meanwhile, sparked debate for being a white Australian actor cast as Heathcliff, a character described by Brontë as “dark-skinned,” whose outsider status is crucial to the novel’s themes of class and race. Fennell’s decision to cast actors of color in supporting roles, while assigning the leads to white actors, has also drawn criticism for its implications and the messages it sends about desirability and status.
The changes don’t stop at casting. Fennell’s script slices the book in half, discarding not only characters but also key motivations and relationships. Hindley’s jealousy and abuse, which drive Heathcliff’s thirst for revenge in the novel, are reassigned to Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes), who is portrayed as an abusive, drunken father rather than the complex, loving figure Brontë wrote. This shift fundamentally alters Heathcliff’s character arc, turning him from a tormented antihero into a more conventional romantic lead. As Collider notes, “This isn’t Heathcliff and Cathy, but Fennell’s imagined romantic version of her own fantasies.”
Even familiar characters are barely recognizable. Nelly (Hong Chau), once the story’s observant and compassionate narrator, is transformed into a resentful bastard daughter with little warmth for Cathy. Joseph (Ewan Mitchell), the original’s religious zealot, is reduced to a background figure with a penchant for BDSM. Isabella Linton (Alison Oliver), who in Brontë’s novel is an innocent victim of Heathcliff’s cruelty, becomes a mean-spirited, obsessive presence. These changes upend the dynamics that made the original story so compelling, replacing psychological complexity with melodrama and kink.
Visually, however, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is nothing if not striking. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren bathes the Yorkshire moors in lush, saturated colors, while Anthony Willis’ sweeping score accentuates the film’s emotional highs and lows. Costume designer Jacqueline Durran, an Oscar winner for Anna Karenina and Little Women, trades historical accuracy for bold experimentation: synthetic latex dresses, shimmering negligees, and rose-colored glasses abound. As Mashable observed, the film’s ad campaign leans into modern romance-novel tropes, with posters featuring Robbie and Elordi locked in passionate embrace and the tagline “Come undone.” The soundtrack, too, is defiantly anachronistic, featuring dance-pop tracks from Charli XCX.
Yet for all its visual flair, critics have found the film emotionally hollow. The chemistry between Robbie and Elordi is described by Mashable as having “all the chemistry of Barbie and Ken dolls bumping rubber when they collide.” The film’s sex scenes, which span beds, carriages, and windswept plains, are more exhausting than erotic, and the introduction of BDSM elements feels more playful than transgressive—stripping the original’s darkness of its bite. “This makes the depravity of the novel more playful than dark,” Mashable writes, pointing out that Heathcliff’s violence is now channeled through consensual kink rather than genuine menace.
The film’s treatment of race and class has also raised eyebrows. Heathcliff’s outsider status, so central to Brontë’s exploration of social hierarchy, is diminished by Elordi’s casting and the film’s aesthetic choices. Scenes that fetishize white skin—such as the infamous “skin room” designed for Cathy by her husband Edgar (Shazad Latif), with walls lined in vinyl panels mimicking her complexion—have been described as “repulsive” and tone-deaf. According to Mashable, “Perhaps Fennell feared such fetishizing would be problematic if Heathcliff were ‘dark-skinned’ as Brontë wrote. But she doubles down with this painting of whiteness as desirable.”
All these creative decisions have led to a film that feels, in the words of Collider, “closer to an original story than anything that Emily Brontë ever wrote.” The generational saga of revenge and redemption is replaced by a narrow focus on romance, and the nuanced exploration of race, class, and trauma is lost amid a swirl of latex and melodrama. For those unfamiliar with the novel, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights might pass as a stylish, if shallow, love story. But for fans of Brontë’s original, it’s a jarring departure—one that, as Collider puts it, “feels like a 14-year-old skimmed the book and jumped to her own conclusions without any true understanding of the novel.”
Still, adaptations are always a matter of interpretation, and Fennell’s boldness has its defenders. Some see value in her willingness to reimagine a classic, even if the result is divisive. As one critic noted, “Adaptations are never what the book was, because the book is different depending on who reads it.” But whether audiences embrace or reject Fennell’s vision, one thing is certain: this Wuthering Heights is bound to spark conversation for years to come.