A fevered love story gets a daring new lens
Forget the polite period romance. The Wuthering Heights trailer that Warner Bros. rolled out on September 3, 2025, is hot-blooded, wind-whipped, and unapologetically carnal. Emerald Fennell, fresh off a run of provocative work that grabbed both Oscars and headlines, is steering Emily Brontë’s 1847 classic into a space where desire, class, and cruelty collide at full speed. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi take center stage as Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, their chemistry driving a two-minute tease that promises a hard look at obsession rather than a soft-focus stroll through the moors.
Fennell directs from her own screenplay, which is exactly what her fans wanted. Her films thrive on characters who burn with need and make terrible, human choices, and Brontë’s world fits right into that wheelhouse. The trailer shows bodies pressed against stone walls, faces lit by candlelight, breath fogging in the cold air—visual cues that say this isn’t a museum piece. It’s tempestuous, sometimes vicious, and willing to go where the book’s darkest impulses lead.
Robbie’s Catherine gets the spine and volatility she deserves—more wildfire than damsel. Elordi’s Heathcliff carries menace and hurt in equal parts, a presence that feels feral but wounded. We even hear a jagged pledge of devotion—“I can follow you like a dog to the end of the world”—that sets the temperature for everything else. This is not a romance built for comfort. It’s a pact forged in need, pride, and payback.
The supporting cast is stacked with telling choices. Oscar nominee Hong Chau adds flint and precision to every project she touches. Shazad Latif brings an edge that plays well in stories about identity and power. Alison Oliver, who broke out in Conversations with Friends, has the emotional clarity to cut through period-drama noise. BAFTA winner Martin Clunes lends gravitas, and Ewan Mitchell, a standout in House of the Dragon, fits right in with stories that trade in storm clouds and sharp elbows. No one looks miscast. Everyone looks dangerous.
It’s also a production built by a team that knows how to turn risk into conversation. Fennell produces alongside Josey McNamara and Robbie, with Sara Desmond and Tom Ackerley executive producing. That LuckyChap banner—Robbie and Ackerley’s outfit—has become a magnet for daring projects that still find large audiences. With Warner Bros. and MRC backing the film, there’s scale to match the ambition.
Why this story, why now—and how Fennell plans to land it
Brontë’s novel is famously ferocious. It’s Gothic, tangled, and not designed to make you feel safe. Two households—Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange—sit in a landscape that mirrors the characters: beautiful, hard, and constantly on the verge of a storm. Over generations, obsession chews through everyone. Most adaptations shave down those edges to fit a more traditional love story. Fennell clearly isn’t doing that. The trailer’s mood points toward the text’s hot core: class humiliation, sexual charge, and a love that becomes a weapon.
Here’s what else stands out. The moors aren’t just scenery. They’re a character—open, bleak, indifferent. You can sense the cold in the wash of gray skies and the sting of rain on skin. Interiors aren’t cozy; they’re cramped, creaking, and charged with unsaid things. That visual language lines up with Fennell’s taste for places that feel alive and complicit in the characters’ choices.
Previous screen versions set a high bar. The 1939 film with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon turned Heathcliff and Cathy into Hollywood tragedy. The 1992 version with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche doubled down on intensity and atmosphere. Andrea Arnold’s 2011 take stripped the story to the bone and pushed naturalism to the forefront. Fennell’s version looks like it’s chasing a different prize: intimacy so close it’s uncomfortable, with sensuality used not as window dressing but as a narrative tool to show power shifting moment to moment.
That choice makes sense when you look at Fennell’s track record. Promising Young Woman didn’t flinch from revenge or accountability, and Saltburn soaked in privilege, hunger, and exhibitionism. She builds stories around the knots people tie themselves into and then asks us to sit with the mess. Catherine and Heathcliff are tailor-made for that approach. They’re as much about pride and status as they are about love, and the trailer keeps that tension visible in the staging and the looks they throw at each other when words fail.
Robbie arrives with momentum to burn. After carrying Barbie to cultural-event status and producing a run of buzzy titles, she continues to hunt roles that let her shift shape—icy, playful, wounded, then ruthless. Catherine gives her all that terrain in a single part. Elordi, meanwhile, is settling into the center of adult drama after Priscilla and a breakout turn as a gilded menace in Saltburn. As Heathcliff, he gets a character defined by endurance, fury, and longing—a physical role that demands silence be as loud as speech.
Around them, the ensemble hints at how Fennell may balance the book’s web of relationships. Hong Chau’s presence suggests the minor-key scenes might carry as much threat as the big confrontations. Latif’s intensity fits characters who read the room and strike at the right moment. Oliver’s poise could make the second-generation storyline feel more modern without breaking the period spell. Mitchell often plays characters who look like they were raised in the wind; that’s very Wuthering Heights.
The marketing timing is sharp. The U.S. release date—February 13, 2026—lands right at the start of Valentine’s weekend, but the pitch isn’t roses and champagne. It’s the kind of Valentine’s counterprogramming that sells on heat, danger, and a love story that leaves marks. International rollout starts February 11. That’s a sign Warner Bros. and MRC see cross-border potential in a literary title, especially one with two leads who travel well across markets.
There’s no rating yet and no runtime disclosed. But the tone of the trailer—sweat, skin, ragged breathing, and the thrum of threat—points to an adult-oriented cut. That’s not a bug; it’s the strategy. Brontë didn’t write a comfort read, and the team seems intent on honoring that instead of sanding it down.
It’s also worth clocking the production DNA. LuckyChap has curated a brand that pairs glossy reach with sharp edges—think I, Tonya and Promising Young Woman. The presence of MRC signals a willingness to finance projects that punch above their weight in conversation, not just box office. Put them with Warner Bros.’ distribution muscle, and you’ve got a machine built to turn a period drama into a zeitgeist play.
For readers of the novel, one big question hangs over any adaptation: how much of the second generation makes it in? The trailer stays laser-focused on Catherine and Heathcliff, which suggests Fennell’s cut may prioritize the toxic wildfire of the first half over the later attempts at repair. That can work on film, where two hours demand a clean line. If the second-generation arc appears, expect it to be used as a counterpoint rather than a full mirror.
Visually, the clip uses contrast to set rules. Mud and lace. Blood and rain. A hand at a throat, then a hand reaching for help. Sound design leans on breath and storm, letting silence play the villain until someone breaks it. Costuming avoids fussy detail and reads as lived-in—clothes for people who work, fight, and run instead of posing in drawing rooms. The whole thing pushes toward immediacy, like someone opened a window and let the weather inside.
That approach might be why this trailer landed with such heat online. Viewers don’t just see the classic; they feel it. Obsession is uncomfortable. Revenge is ugly. Fennell isn’t trying to rescue these characters from their worst choices, and that honesty gives the footage its voltage. If the film keeps that promise, expect debates about sympathy, class cruelty, and the line between romance and harm to light up timelines again, the way Saltburn did for different reasons.
For now, the film sits in post-production, with months to fine-tune pacing, texture, and how far to push the intimacy. That runway matters. The edit will decide whether we get a tragic march or a fever dream that won’t cool down. Either way, the pieces are in place: a director who relishes moral gray, two stars ready to bruise, a cast that can stare a storm down, and a release slot built for friction as much as flowers.
