What We Know About Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi’s Wild "Wuthering Heights"

I didn’t wake up today planning to clutch my blanket like a Victorian heroine having a fainting spell. But the moment the Wuthering Heights poster dropped, starring Aussie exports Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, I leapt out of bed like Cathy sprinting across the moors. As both a devoted fan of the novel and a disillusioned English Lit major, I exclaimed in horror. This wasn’t Wuthering Heights, it looked more like Fifty Shades of Brontë.

Whatever flicker of excitement I’d nursed for Emerald Fennell’s take on Emily Brontë’s windswept classic crumbled before I could finish my morning coffee. The poster alone that portrays Jacob Elordi yearning to kiss Margot Robbie, with the faint tree in the background felt a little anachronistic.

The adrenaline for that once gothic, tragic and grand story, evaporated.

But something kept tugging at me as I started my day. Why would a BAFTA-winning filmmaker like Emerald Fennell, whose Promising Young Woman proved she knows her way around nuance, tension, and style, misunderstand the very atmosphere that makes Wuthering Heights endure?

And then it struck me like a lightning bolt tearing through the heathered moor visually, it’s giving Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. The cotton-candy colour palette. The anachronistic glamour. The stormy, beautiful chaos. The resemblance to Gone With the Wind in the poster wasn’t accidental. And the original soundtrack? Written entirely by Grammy-winner Charli XCX. Suddenly, it all made sense.

Now, I’m not a Charli XCX devotee but I spent some time rewatching the trailer, combing through interviews, and decoding early reactions. And it turns out: this isn’t Wuthering Heights. It’s “Wuthering Heights”—quotation marks fully intentional.

In the sensual new teaser that dropped a few hours ago, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi get hot and heavy as Catherine and Heathcliff: chests heaving, fingers in mouths, and corset laces and whips, all while Charli’s Brat-era ballad “Everything Is Romantic” throbs in the background.

If Wuthering Heights is about love as ruin, Charli’s music leans fully into that destructive, dramatic energy. On X (formerly Twitter), she confirmed that she’s written original songs for the film, posting, “new original songs by me for Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. in theatres february 14th. happy early valentines <3”

It’s an inspired choice. Coming off the back of her breakout Brat album (a Billboard 200 No. 3 chart success), Charli is riding high and her involvement signals exactly what kind of Wuthering Heights this is going to be. Gritty and guttural, sure, but also hyper-stylised, highly erotic, and sonically modern.

So, before we dive into what we know about "Wuthering Heights" from the trailer drop, here's some details for the non-readers and people who haven't heard the name Wuthering Heights before the gorgeous Barbie actor Margot Robbie took up the project.

It’s worth remembering what Wuthering Heights has always been. Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel is a feral, feverish tale of obsession, revenge, and love that curdles into hate. Set on the storm-lashed Yorkshire moors, it follows the doomed bond between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, the orphan outsider taken in by her family. Their love is raw, destructive, and maddening. It’s one of the most unhinged love stories in English literature, and that’s exactly why it endures.

Here’s what we know so far about the new Wuthering Heights film that's dropping on Valentine's Day in 2026.

The Title

The film is officially titled “Wuthering Heights”, quotation marks included. That punctuation does a lot of heavy lifting. It suggests this isn’t a direct adaptation but rather a remix—a reimagining that flirts with the essence of Brontë’s classic while knowingly deviating from its gothic roots.

Visually A Pastel Dream (or Nightmare)

Forget the bleak, windswept moors of 19th-century Yorkshire. Fennell’s version is drenched in soft pinks, pale blues, and warm golds. It’s not gothic in the traditional sense, it’s sensual, stylised, and almost baroque. Vengeance here isn’t hidden in shadows and we'll leave it here for now.

Sunglasses

Forget strict historical accuracy. While the silhouettes mostly nod to period fashion, there are bold, deliberate anachronisms that signal we’re not in 1847 anymore. Most striking? Margot Robbie, as Catherine Earnshaw, wears a pair of red-tinted sunglasses in one scene—a detail that feels lifted from a Lana Del Rey music video or a Tumblr mood board. It’s camp. It’s rebellious. It’s a clear declaration that this version of Wuthering Heights isn’t much like the original or its predecessors.

Tone Is Provocative and Divisive

The novel is famously charged with longing, repression, and destructive love. But the film? According to early reports from early screenings, it’s allegedly “aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive.” One scene features a public hanging where the condemned man ejaculates mid-execution. (Yes, you read that right.) Whether it’s audacious art or shock for shock’s sake, Fennell is clearly swinging for something bolder than brooding glances and haunted love.

Heathcliff Debate Rages On

Heathcliff has always been an enigma described in the novel as “a dark-skinned gipsy” and elsewhere as “as white as the wall behind him.” Over decades, he’s almost exclusively been played by white actors including Tom Hardy, Ralph Fiennes, and now Jacob Elordi. Some readers have long called for a non-white Heathcliff to reflect the character’s racial ambiguity. When casting director Karmel Cochrane was called out earlier this year on Instagram for another white Heathcliff casting, she clapped back:

“Just wait till you see it, and then you can decide whether you want to shoot me or not. But you really don't need to be accurate. It's just a book. That is not based on real life. It's all art.”