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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 $240.4 million worldwide, becoming the fifth-highest grossing-film of 2026.[6]

Plot

In 18th-century England, Mr. Earnshaw returns to his estate of Wuthering Heights on the Yorkshire Moors with a young boy he rescued off the Liverpool streets, who he introduces to his daughter, Cathy, and her companion, Nelly Dean. Cathy becomes protective of the boy and names him “Heathcliff”. As time goes on, the pair become inseparable.

By the time Cathy and Heathcliff have reached adulthood, Wuthering Heights has fallen into disrepair due to Mr. Earnshaw’s worsening alcoholism and gambling habits. Cathy plans to court her new neighbour, wealthy textile merchant Edgar Linton, to escape Wuthering Heights’ bleak environment and help bring the lowly servant Heathcliff into high society, though Heathcliff is jealous and disapproves. The situation becomes more complicated when Cathy and Heathcliff begin to realise that they have fallen in love with each other, although Cathy initially shuns the idea of becoming romantically involved with Heathcliff and continues to pursue Edgar.

One day, Cathy sprains her ankle while spying on Edgar and his ward, Isabella, and is taken in at their home for six weeks to heal. Edgar is smitten by Cathy and proposes marriage, which she accepts. While expressing to Nelly her guilt over choosing Edgar over Heathcliff, Cathy implies Nelly wouldn’t understand because she “never loved anyone” and no one loves her. Provoked, Nelly bitterly manipulates Cathy into saying that marrying Heathcliff would degrade her, so that it would be overheard by him. Heathcliff leaves before he hears Cathy confess her love for him and her belief in their connection, wrongly believing that Cathy does not care for him, and then leaves Wuthering Heights, riding away on horseback into the sunset. By the next day, Cathy has changed her mind about marrying Edgar, but it is too late as Heathcliff has already left. Cathy is devastated by his departure and initially refuses to accept that he could have left her.

A year later, Cathy has given up hope that Heathcliff will come back and decides to go through with the marriage to Edgar after all. After the wedding, she lives a lavish lifestyle with her husband at their home, Thrushcross Grange, but secretly longs to be reunited with Heathcliff again. As the years go by, Cathy eventually becomes pregnant with Edgar’s child. Soon after Cathy learns of her pregnancy, Heathcliff finally returns, five years after his departure, and is now well-groomed and wealthy. Rather than being happy to see Cathy, he is bitter and angry over her decision to marry Edgar and considers marrying Isabella to make Cathy jealous. He purchases Wuthering Heights from Mr. Earnshaw, who dies soon after. Following this, Heathcliff consoles Cathy and they reconnect, beginning an intense romantic and sexual affair.

After Cathy realizes Nelly knew Heathcliff was listening when Cathy said marrying him would degrade her, she tries to banish Nelly from the Grange. Nelly then reveals the affair to Edgar, who forbids Cathy from seeing Heathcliff. Cathy later reveals her pregnancy to Heathcliff, who claims to not mind before having sex with her. He offers to kill Edgar, which Cathy rejects, and she dismisses him. Furious, Heathcliff enters into a loveless, BDSM relationship with Isabella, who understands Heathcliff’s motivations and agrees to elope with him. Following the marriage, Heathcliff degrades Isabella and treats her like a dog, which Nelly witnesses when she visits them at Wuthering Heights.

Depressed over Heathcliff marrying Isabella, Cathy locks herself in her room and starves herself. Heathcliff tries to stay connected to Cathy by secretly sending her love letters while she is isolated and growing weaker, but Nelly deliberately intercepts them, letting Cathy think Heathcliff has abandoned her. Her pregnancy eventually results in a miscarriage which becomes septicemic. When Nelly realizes how serious Cathy’s situation is, she returns to Wuthering Heights to rescue Isabella and to reveal to Heathcliff that Cathy is dying. Heathcliff frantically rides to the Grange on horseback, only to find when he arrives that Cathy has already died. Heathcliff then holds Cathy’s dead body and begs her to drive him mad and not give him peace as long as he should live.

Cast

Production

Development and casting

Writer–director Emerald Fennell and actress Margot Robbie also produced the film.

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]

Filming

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] 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.[21]

Music

Main articles: Wuthering Heights (soundtrack) and Wuthering Heights (score)

Anthony Willis composed the score for the film, after having worked with Fennell on Saltburn, with Charli XCX contributing an album of original songs.[22][23] The lead single, “House” featuring Welsh musician John Cale, was released on November 10, 2025,[24] alongside a music video directed by Mitch Ryan.[25] A second song, “Chains of Love“, was released on November 13, coinciding with the film’s theatrical trailer, which also featured the song.[23] Two further singles were released, “Wall of Sound” on January 16, 2026,[26] and “Always Everywhere” on February 13, the same day as the album.[27]

Influences

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).[28]

Marketing

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.[29] 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.[30]

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.”[31] On January 20, 2026, Elordi and Robbie were announced as the cover stars of Vogue Australia's February 2026 issue.[32]

Release

Theatrical

On January 28, 2026, Wuthering Heights had its world premiere at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.[33] Wuthering Heights was released in the United States and the United Kingdom on February 13, 2026, on the eve of Valentine’s Day.[34] It is slated to release in IMAX cinemas.[35]

Home media

Wuthering Heights was released on digital streaming on March 31, 2026, and will be released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on May 5, 2026.[36]

Reception

Box office

As of April 9, 2026, Wuthering Heights has grossed $84 million in the United States and Canada, and $156 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $240 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 domestically, finishing second place behind Goat; it had grossed 152 million worldwide by that point.[39]

Critical response

Metacritic review
breakdown (unweighted)

Positive
23 (39%)
Mixed
29 (49%)
Negative
7 (12%)

Wuthering Heights was met with mixed reviews from critics.[40][41] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 58% of 337 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] Caryn James of BBC wrote “Fennell drops in some comic moments, and at times dares to be over the top […] but its excesses are a small price to pay for such ambition. However much Fennell toys with the details – and why not? the book still exists – she captures the essential enduring passion of Wuthering Heights and its class-bound time.”[50]

References

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  2. ^ a b Rubin, Rebecca (February 11, 2026). “‘Wuthering Heights’ to Heat Up Box Office With $50 Million-Plus Debut”. Variety. Archived from the original on February 11, 2026. Retrieved February 11, 2026.
  3. ^ “Wuthering Heights”. Box Office Mojo. Retrieved April 10, 2026.
  4. ^ a b “Wuthering Heights — Box Office and Financial Information”. The Numbers. Retrieved April 10, 2026.
  5. ^ a b The Run-Through with Vogue; Vogue (February 18, 2026). Emerald Fennell: Adapting “Wuthering Heights” & Crushing Eggs. YouTube. Event occurs at 8:14. Retrieved February 22, 2026.
  6. ^ “2026 Worldwide Box Office”. Box Office Mojo.
  7. ^ Mitchell, Harriet (July 13, 2024). “Emerald Fennell reveals next movie following Saltburn success”. Digital Spy. Archived from the original on July 13, 2024. Retrieved July 13, 2024.
  8. ^ Kroll, Justin (September 23, 2024). “Margot Robbie And Jacob Elordi To Star In Emerald Fennell’s Adaptation Of Wuthering Heights From MRC And LuckyChap”. Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on September 23, 2024. Retrieved September 23, 2024.
  9. ^ a b Belloni, Matthew (October 11, 2024). “What I’m Hearing: A New Oscars Plan, Netflix’s Wuthering Bid & Bela’s Book”. Puck. Retrieved October 13, 2024.
  10. ^ Fleming, Mike Jr (October 24, 2024). “Warner Bros’ Global Theatrical Commitment Wins Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights; Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi Star In MRC Package With LuckyChap Producing”. Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved October 24, 2024.
  11. ^ Perella, Vincent (April 17, 2025). “Jacob Elordi on Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein Gift and Going Through ‘a Layer of Hell’ for ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’“. IndieWire. Retrieved April 19, 2025.
  12. ^ McTaggart, India (September 24, 2024). “Wuthering Heights film stirs controversy after white actor chosen to play Heathcliff”. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved April 21, 2025.
  13. ^ Brontë, Emily (1998) [1847]. Wuthering Heights. Oxford’s World Classics. pp. 21, 44. ISBN 978-0192833549.
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  22. ^ “Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ to Feature Original Songs by Charli XCX and Score by Anthony Willis”. Film Music Reporter. September 3, 2025. Retrieved September 3, 2025.
  23. ^ a b Strauss, Matthew (November 13, 2025). “Charli XCX Announces New Album Wuthering Heights, Shares New Song “Chains of Love”“. Pitchfork. Retrieved November 13, 2025.
  24. ^ Ragusa, Paolo (November 10, 2025). “Charli XCX Goes Goth Rock in New Song “House” Featuring John Cale: Stream”. Consequence of Sound. Retrieved November 10, 2025.
  25. ^ XCX, Charli (November 10, 2025). Charli xcx – House featuring John Cale (Official Video) (Video). YouTube.
  26. ^ Farrell, Margaret. “Charli XCX – “Wall Of Sound”“. Stereogum. Retrieved January 21, 2026.
  27. ^ Dresdale, Andrea (February 13, 2026). “Watch Charli XCX’s new video for ‘Wuthering Heights’ track ‘Always Everywhere’“. ABC Audio. Retrieved February 16, 2026.
  28. ^ Seth, Radhika (January 17, 2026). “13 Stylish Films to Watch Before Wuthering Heights, According to Emerald Fennell”. Vogue. Retrieved February 11, 2026.
  29. ^ Stevens, Abigail (September 3, 2025). “First Teasers for Margot Robbie’s Wuthering Heights Revealed”. ScreenRant. Retrieved September 3, 2025.
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  31. ^ Sayce, Rebecca (January 15, 2026). “Why Wuthering Heights has quote marks around its title has finally been explained”. Digital Spy. Retrieved January 20, 2026.
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  33. ^ Ford, Rebecca (January 29, 2026). “The Wuthering Heights World Premiere Was Blood Red and Black-Tie”. Vanity Fair. Retrieved January 29, 2026.
  34. ^ D’Alessandro, Anthony (December 13, 2024). “Wuthering Heights with Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi to Make Audiences Swoon on Valentine’s Day Weekend 2026″. Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved December 14, 2024.
  35. ^ “Wuthering Heights (2026) Movie Tickets & Showtimes Near You”. www.imax.com. December 11, 2025. Retrieved December 25, 2025.
  36. ^ Tingley, Anna (March 31, 2026), “‘Wuthering Heights’ Sets Digital and Blu-ray Release”, Variety, retrieved March 24, 2026
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  38. ^ McClintock, Pamela (February 17, 2026). “Box Office: ‘Wuthering Heights’ Prevails With $37.5 Million Domestic Opening, $83 Million Globally”. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 18, 2026.
  39. ^ McClintock, Pamela (February 22, 2026). “Box Office: ‘GOAT’ Struts to No. 1 Stateside With $17M, ‘Wuthering Heights’ Earns $14M for Sexy Global Haul of $152M”. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 23, 2026.
  40. ^ Thomas, Carly (February 10, 2026). “‘Wuthering Heights’: What the Critics Are Saying”. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 11, 2026.
  41. ^ “Wuthering Heights: Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi film splits critics”. BBC. February 10, 2026. Retrieved February 11, 2026.
  42. ^ “Wuthering Heights“. Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved March 25, 2026.
  43. ^ “Wuthering Heights“. Metacritic. Fandom, Inc. Retrieved March 9, 2026.
  44. ^ “Home”. CinemaScore. Retrieved February 14, 2026.
  45. ^ Sims, David (February 9, 2026). “An Erotically Untamed Take on Wuthering Heights”. The Atlantic. Retrieved February 9, 2026.
  46. ^ Bradshaw, Peter (February 9, 2026). “Wuthering Heights review: too hot, too greedy adaptation guarantees bad dreams in the night”. The Guardian. Retrieved February 9, 2026.
  47. ^ LaSalle, Mick (February 10, 2026). “Emerald Fennell’s sexed-up ‘Wuthering Heights’ just hangs limp”. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved February 12, 2026.
  48. ^ Hertz, Barry (February 10, 2026). “Garish and silly ‘Wuthering Heights’ strands Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi on the moors forevermore”. The Globe and the Mail. Retrieved February 15, 2026.
  49. ^ Chihaya, Sarah (March 2, 2026). “The Bad Vibes of “Wuthering Heights”“. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved March 16, 2026.
  50. ^ “Project Hail Mary to The Drama: Eight of the best films of 2026 so far”. www.bbc.com. April 10, 2026. Retrieved April 15, 2026.