NEED TO KNOW
- In 2024, Emerald Fennell announced she was adapting Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights into a movie
- Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi will play the famous Catherine and Heathcliff
- The film is set to premiere in theaters on Feb. 13, 2026, in time for Valentine’s Day
Two years after the project was first announced, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are bringing a modern take on a centuries-old tragic love story to the big screen.
In July 2024, director Emerald Fennell announced her plans to adapt Emily Brontë’s 1847 gothic novel Wuthering Heights on X. Variety reported that after a bidding war with Netflix, the filmmaker (best known for her other award-winning projects Saltburn and Promising Young Woman) accepted a bid from Warner Bros. and set a theatrical release date for Valentine’s Day 2026.
Fennell’s project joins a slew of other Wuthering Heights adaptations that have been filmed over the past century. Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon famously played Heathcliff and Catherine in the 1939 film, followed by Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche embodying the star-crossed lovers in 1992.
In 2009, Tom Hardy met his wife, Charlotte Riley, while costarring as Heathcliff and Catherine in the first of two TV movies. Wuthering Heights was also adapted into two series, which came out in 1978 and 1998.
Here’s everything to know about the Wuthering Heights movie, including the release date, cast, plot and trailer.
What is Wuthering Heights about?
The 2026 film Wuthering Heights is based on Brontë’s novel, which follows the doomed romance between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw as jealousy, obsession and class divide spiral into a cycle of revenge that haunts their families for generations.
In the novel, Heathcliff is taken in as a mysterious orphan by a well-to-do family and forms an intense bond with their daughter, Catherine. But prejudice and social pressures poison that bond, setting the stage for tragedy.
Whether or not Fennell’s version of the classic novel will stay true to the original story remains to be seen. However, the film’s casting director told Deadline in April 2025 that there are “definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy” with the new interpretation.
“Wait until you see the set design because that is even more shocking,” Kharmel Cochrane told the outlet. “And there may or may not be a dog collar in it.”
Who is in the cast of Wuthering Heights?
In addition to Robbie and Elordi playing the iconic Catherine and Heathcliff, the rest of the Wuthering Heights cast includes Hong Chau, Alison Oliver, Shazad Latif, Martin Clunes and Ewan Mitchell.
Charlotte Mellington and Adolescence‘s Owen Cooper will take on the parts of young Catherine and Heathcliff.
Robbie teased that Fennell’s upcoming project would be even crazier than Saltburn.
“Just you wait,” Robbie said in an Instagram clip from an August 2025 interview with MTV. “It’s bananas. It’s great. It’s brilliant.”
Who is directing Wuthering Heights?
Fennell will serve as the director, writer and producer of Wuthering Heights, per Variety.
This isn’t the first time the Oscar-winning director has worked with her leading man and lady. She acted alongside Robbie in Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film Barbie and worked with Elordi in her psychological thriller Saltburn, which she both wrote and directed.
Wuthering Heights will mark Fennell’s third film project, and the tragic tale fits right into her canon. In a January 2024 column for the Los Angeles Times, the Hollywood triple-threat wrote that she has “always been obsessed with the gothic.”
“Whether it was Edward Gorey’s children who are variously choked by peaches, sucked dry by leeches or smothered by rugs; Du Maurier’s imperiled heroines or the disturbing erotic power of Angela Carter’s fairy tales, the gothic world has always had me in its grip,” she wrote.
Fennell continued, “It’s a genre where comedy and horror, revulsion and desire, sex and death are forever entwined, where every exchange is heavy with the threat of violence, or sex or both.”
Where was Wuthering Heights filmed?
Filming for Wuthering Heights began in 2025, with shooting locations in the Yorkshire Dales National Park in England. The BBC reported that other locations included valleys such as Arkengarthdale and Swaledale, the village of Low Row, and Surrender Bridge, a landmark featured in the 1980 series All Creatures Great and Small.
In March 2025, Robbie was photographed in an extravagant bridal costume while filming for Wuthering Heights.
Is there a trailer for Wuthering Heights?
Following the release of the first teaser trailer for Wuthering Heights in September 2025, the full-length trailer for the movie debuted in November, giving a better look at the separation between Catherine and Heathcliff — and what happens when they’re reunited.
The trailer shows Catherine set to get married, when Heathcliff reenters her life ready to whisk her away and be together. The clip also features original music from Charli XCX and plenty of views of the moody setting of the iconic moors from the story.
When will Wuthering Heights be released?
Wuthering Heights will be released just in time for Valentine’s Day, on Feb. 13, 2026.
Where can I watch Wuthering Heights?
Wuthering Heights will be released in theaters.
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