Director Emerald Fennell is no stranger to causing a stir, but still – she might have outdone herself with Wuthering Heights.
The film isn’t out yet and it already has purists frothing at the mouth, fans following the cast members’ every move and eyebrows raising, thanks to the increasingly bonkers facts that have started to leak about what’s actually in it.
Set to release in 2026, it stars Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as Cathy (though the book does feature two Cathys, and it’s not entirely certain which of them she’ll be playing).
According to World of Reel, a test screening for the film took place earlier in August in Dallas. Apparently, the reaction was “mixed”: one of the audience members described it as “aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive”.
The film apparently calls back to Saltburn’s scenes of “stylised depravity” (Barry Keoghan, bathtub, you know the one), including scenes of “clinical masturbation” (whatever that means) as well as a couple of other bits that definitely weren’t included in the original book by Emily Brontë.
Though test screening audiences usually promise to keep what they’ve seen confidential – and the version they’ve seen will by no means be what makes it into cinemas – clearly this ruffled a few feathers.
In addition to a bondage-inspired scene involving horse reins, the film reportedly opens with a public hanging in which the “condemned man ejaculates mid-execution”. The crowd cheers, while a nun then “fondles the corpse’s visible erection”.
First look at Emerald Fennell’s ‘WUTHERING HEIGHTS’ starring Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi.
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) February 14, 2025
In theaters February 14, 2026. pic.twitter.com/IQPlNplMDD
The film is also said to include some classic Fennell-isms, including takes of “suggestive textures” like egg yolks and slug trails, while the characters themselves are apparently portrayed as “cold and unlikeable”.
Images from the set have also made their way online in recent months. In March, we saw Robbie standing in the moors wearing a wedding dress; in April, an image leaked showed Elordi sporting some scraggly sideburns and a gold tooth.
Wuthering Heights, the Fennell version, has been in the works for a few years now. On July 12, 2024, Fennell shared an illustration on X of a ghostly skeleton, with the words “Wuthering Heights: A film by Emerald Fennell”.
The image also sported the strapline “Be with me always. Take any form. Drive me mad” – the words Heathcliff famously says after Cathy’s death.
