Margot Robbie’s Wuthering Heights Trailer Shows Everyone’s Defending Emily Brontë for All the Right Reasons

People are, as the disgraced Drake once said, in their feelings about Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of “Wuthering Heights.” To be honest, I understand why. Fennell, who could most politely be described as a “divisive” director, is an interesting choice to direct a version of Emily Brontë’s only novel. As Tina Fey rightly said on the “Las Culturistas” podcast about the Oscar winner’s entire body of work and general vibe: “What are you going to do when Emerald Fennell calls you about her next project, where you play Carey Mulligan’s co-worker in the bridal section of Harrods, and then Act 3 takes a sexually violent turn and you have to pretend to be surprised by that turn ?” Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are set to play the windswept and doomed lovers Catherine and Heathcliff, although Robbie is nearly a decade older than Elordi (and Heathcliff is not white), and in general, Brontë fans are speaking out.

In the YouTube comments below the film’s trailer, @Raul-j6t took exception to the film’s tagline, writing: “‘The greatest love story of all time’. I don’t think we read the same book.” Someone else, user @me-sunnyg, joked: “If you listen really closely, at the end you can hear Emily [Brontë] screaming from beyond the grave. » These are, frankly, funny versions of Fennell’s next film, and I get it; anyone who is really attached to the novel is going to have problems with a clearly anachronistic and offbeat adaptation. (The Charli XCX soundtrack certainly doesn’t help either.) Personally, I think people are RIGHT be concerned about this movie, but I Also I think there’s something else at play here… is that people get into the habit of passing judgment on films long before they’re released.

If you’re not a big Emily Brontë head and haven’t revisited “Wuthering Heights” since reading it in 11th grade AP English, let me refresh your memory. The novel, which Brontë published under a male pseudonym (Ellis Bell, to be precise), is widely considered one of the best literary works in the English canon, and it is also relentlessly dark. (Check the trigger warnings before reading, that’s all I’ll say to that effect.) Through the eyes of a housekeeper named Ellen “Nelly” Dean, who will be played by Academy Award nominee Hong Chau in Emerald Fennell’s film, we learn about Margot Robbie’s wealthy Catherine Earnshaw and her torrid, troubled romance with Jacob Elordi’s famously brooding Heathcliff, a orphan taken in by Catherine’s father. Although Catherine’s father loves Heathcliff and treats him like family, after his death, Catherine’s cruel brother essentially rejects the young man and is even violent with him, leading Catherine to care for Heathcliff by showing him affection.

Wuthering Heights takes place over many years and is a difficult, heavy and even disturbing book about domestic violence, generational trauma, the impossible Victorian class system and a whole host of other issues that were distinctly of its time but are still relevant today. My point here is that Fennell is a truly crazy choice to direct “Wruffing Heights” based on her first two films, “Promising Young Woman” and “Saltburn,” the former of which I’d say works much better than the latter – but she’s still a super-strengthened, stylistically odd and often unfocused director for such a poignant story. However, I Also I think we should reserve judgment because the movie hasn’t been released yet and this question becomes its own problem.

Anecdotally, I’ve seen discussions on social media about the stills released by Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of “The Odyssey,” and in the midst of those discussions, I’ve seen people say that the stills – which, needless to say, were most likely staged and taken for press purposes and are not as far as anyone knows, the stills from the finished film looked like “cheap” shots from prestige television and thus the whole film looks bad. Honestly, it’s so ridiculous.

“Wuthering Heights” could absolutely be a disaster and feature this “sexually violent turn” that makes the whole movie absurd, especially because the second half of this story has a bunch of ghosts in it. (Fennell could always do what the movie “MacGruber” did if she really wants to make headlines, but I digress.) Yet I am. begging for moviegoers to stop making assumptions about films no one has seen yet and then proclaiming those assumptions like self-appointed town criers. You really have to let the films speak for themselves, and on February 13, 2026, in the United States — just in time for Valentine’s Day — Fennell’s “Wurling Heights” will have the chance to stand on its own two feet and earn scorn, praise, or a perverse mix of both. For now, let’s give the film a chance to prove itself… and if it’s a dud, I’ll see you here to dive into it next year.

Once again, “Wuthering Heights” will be released in US theaters on February 13, 2026.