What’s Going On With Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights Film?

Last summer, Saltburn fans were elated to hear Emerald Fennell is working on her third project: an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel, Wuthering Heights, starring none other than fan favourite Jacob Elordi in the starring role, opposite fellow Aussie Margot Robbie. But these castings, along with leaked imagery from set, have sparked controversy. Here’s what you need to know.

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights: Plot, Cast, Release Date

On Friday 12 July, director Emerald Fennell posted an intriguing image on X with no caption: an illustration of two skeletons by Katie Buckley, accompanied by the words ‘be with me always – take any form – drive me mad’, a quote from Emily Brontë’s famous novel. In the middle is the title ‘Wuthering Heights’. At the bottom, ‘a film by Emerald Fennell’ is written. That confirms it, then: Fennell’s next feature will be an adaptation of Brontë’s best known novel, Wuthering Heights.

pic.twitter.com/NZXNYAm1wZ

— Emerald Fennell (@emeraldfennell) July 12, 2024

What Will Happen?

Being based on the classic novel, we already know the gist of the story. Wuthering Heights is an intergenerational tome, mainly focussing on Heathcliff and his paramour Catherine Earnshaw on a remote moorland farmhouse called Wuthering Heights.

Tracing the events of 30 years, Heathcliff begins as an adopted son of the wealthy Earnshaw family, with patriarch Mr Earnshaw raising Heathcliff as his own alongside his biological children Hindley and Catherine. Hindley hates Heathcliff while Catherine grows to love him, the pair becoming inseparable. When Earnshaw dies, Hindley sees his chance to enact revenge on the boy who stole his father’s love, reducing Heathcliff’s status to a servant forced to work in the fields. While Catherine and Heathcliff still love each other, she eventually decides to marry local wealthier man Edgar, prompting Heathcliff to run away. Three years later, Heathcliff returns to the estate, rich and educated, to enact revenge on the families he believes ruined his life.

Like Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, Wuthering Heights is a tale of deception and revenge, albeit with a very different backdrop. Fennell is far from the first filmmaker to adapt Brontë’s text for the screen: the first adaptation was created as long ago as 1920 as a silent film, while the most recent was Andrea Arnold’s 2011 version starring Kaya Scodelario and James Howson. How Fennell will put her own spin on the story is yet to be seen.

Image courtesy of MGM and Amazon Studios

Who Will Star?

It’s official: Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie will star in Wuthering Heights, snapping up the central roles of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw respectively. Robbie’s production company LuckyChap Entertainment (founded with her husband Tom Ackerley) is also on board behind the scenes, having previously produced both Promising Young Woman and Saltburn.

They will be joined by younger versions of themselves: Adolescence star Owen Cooper as a young Heathcliff, with Charlotte Mellington as teenage Cathy, hot off her run as Lavender in the West End’s Matilda the Musical. The younger generation is wrapped up with Vy Nguyen, who will star as the young Nelly Dean, who serves as the novel’s main narrator. It’s each youngster’s film debut.

Cooper was famously snapped up by Adolescence director Philip Barantini to star as a 13-year-old accused of murder, despite the youngster’s lack of experience in front of the camera. Cooper’s intricate performance has been praised by audiences and critics alike, and clearly caught the attention of the Wuthering Heights production team: he was cast as young Heathcliff just a fortnight before Adolescence landed on Netflix.

Elsewhere in the cast, Elordi is reunited with his Saltburn co-star Alison Oliver, who will play Isabella Linton. She is joined by Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton, and Hong Chau as the older Nelly Dean.

No news just yet on who else will round out the cast, but our money is on a cameo from Carey Mulligan who has starred in both of Fennell’s films to date: as Cassie, the protagonist of Promising Young Woman (2020); and as Pamela in Saltburn, Elspeth’s friend, often referred to as ‘Poor Dear Pamela’. After the success of Saltburn, we’d love to see the return of more of that film’s stars alongside Elordi and Oliver. With Wuthering Heights being very British, perhaps we will see the return of Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant or Archie Madekwe – or even Irish star Barry Keoghan.

This puts the full Wuthering Heights cast list so far as follows:

• Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw
• Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff
• Charlotte Mellington as young Cathy
• Owen Cooper as young Heathcliff
• Alison Oliver as Isabella Linton
• Shazad Latif as Edgar Linton
• Hong Chau as Nelly Dean
• Vy Nguyen as young Nelly Dean

(L to R) Erin Doherty as Briony Ariston, Owen Cooper as Jamie Miller in Adolescence. (Courtesy of Ben Blackall/Netflix © 2024)

What’s The Controversy?

It’s safe to say fans of Bronte’s classic novel aren’t exactly pleased with Fennell’s vision so far, with a number of issues cropping up. For starters, the very-British protagonists are being portrayed by two Aussie stars, with Cathy, who is around 18 years old in the story, portrayed by 34-year-old Robbie.

Elordi, meanwhile, doesn’t fit Bronte’s description of Heathcliff as ‘dark-skinned’, with people interpreting this across time as an indication Heathcliff is not white. Lockwood describes Heathcliff as ‘a little Lascar [a term for someone of Indian or South East Asian descent], or an American or Spanish castaway’, indicating he has mixed-race or even South Asian origins, fitting with his status as a foundling in Liverpool, which was a major port in the transatlantic slave trade. The racial ambiguity is key to Heathcliff’s character arc: he is othered throughout the novel, and mistreated by characters on the basis of his skin tone. In casting Elordi, then, Fennell has been accused of white washing. Elordi is a white Australian man with Basque heritage and a slightly olive skin tone. Elsewhere in the cast, Latif is part Pakistani and plays the light-skinned, racist Edgar, while Vietnamese Chau plays prejudiced housekeeper Nelly, with fans questioning why the production’s only actors of colour are in antagonist roles.

And then there’s the wedding dress, the latest facet in the firing line. Robbie was spotted on set in March 2025 in a voluminous, glittery wedding gown with a gauzy veil, tiara and bridal bouquet of roses. The historians emerged from the woodwork in droves: white wedding dresses weren’t popular until decades after the events of the novel (which was published in 1847), glitter wasn’t invented until 1934, the cut is a bit Princess Diana, and Catherine should have brown hair, not Robbie’s signature blonde.

Nitpicking? Perhaps. A hill to die on? It seems so for many fans. However, we still don’t know when Fennell’s interpretation of Wuthering Heights is supposed to be set – so there could still be hope…

Fennell on the set of Saltburn with Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi. © Prime Video

Who Is Emerald Fennell?

British actor turned filmmaker, you might recognise Emerald Fennell from the likes of The Danish Girl, Call the Midwife, and portraying Camilla Parker-Bowles in Netflix’s The Crown. Most recently, though, she has risen to fame for her writing: she was the showrunner for season two of Killing Eve, and penned the book for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 2021 musical adaptation of Cinderella, while she made her feature film directorial debut in 2020 with Promising Young Woman starring Carey Mulligan. In 2023, her much-anticipated sophomore movie was Saltburn which, of course, caused quite a stir, especially among families watching the flick over ‘twixmas.

Flashing back to Fennell’s childhood, she is the daughter of jewellery designer Theo Fennell and author Louise Fennell. Her sister, Coco Fennell, is a fashion designer, while Emerald’s 18th birthday party was documented in Tatler with the likes of Poppy Delevigne, Lady Alexandra Gordon Lennox and Alice Rugge-Price on the guestlist. She attended Marlborough College before reading English at the University of Oxford where she acted in university plays and was scouted by a talent agent, thus kicking off her acting career.

Barry Keoghan in Saltburn. © Prime Video

Has Filming Started?

Yes, filming on Wuthering Heights is officially underway, with Robbie spotted roaming a blustery moor in a wedding gown earlier this month.

Release Date

Warner Bros is set to release Wuthering Heights on 13 February 2026 – following the trend set by Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy this Valentine’s Day.