Emerald Fennell‘s highly anticipated adaptation of Wuthering Heights made its debut in Hollywood on Wednesday — and don’t be expecting an exact retelling of Emily Brontë’s classic novel.
The 1847 book follows the intense love affair between Heathcliff (played by Jacob Elordi) and Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) in 18th-century England; Fennell’s version, which is being stylized with quotation marks as “Wuthering Heights,“ features some key casting changes, addition of numerous sex scenes and a soundtrack courtesy of Charli xcx.
“The thing is that it’s my favorite book in the world,” the filmmaker told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet. “Like many people who love this book, I’m kind of fanatical about it, so I knew right from the get-go I couldn’t ever hope to make anything that could even encompass the greatness of this book. All I could do was make a movie that made me feel the way the book made me feel, and therefore it just felt right to say it’s Wuthering Heights, and it isn’t.”
One of the most talked-about changes comes with Elordi’s casting as Heathcliff, who is described as dark-skinned in the book. Of the decision to cast a white actor in the role, Fennell explained, “I think the thing is everyone who loves this book has such a personal connection to it, and so you can only ever make the movie that you sort of imagined yourself when you read it. I don’t know, I think I was focusing on the pseudo-masochistic elements of it.”
“The great thing about this movie is that it could be made every year and it would still be so moving and so interesting,” she continued. “There are so many different takes. I think every year we should have a new one.”
Elordi said himself of the changes to the iconic story, “There are inverted commas for a reason. This is Emerald’s vision and these are the images that came to her head at 14 years old; somebody else’s interpretation of a great piece of art is what I’m interested in — new images, fresh images, original thoughts.”
Margot Robbie and Emerald Fennell at the premiere.
Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images
The film also marks Robbie and Fennell’s first time working together as actress and director, after Robbie produced Fennell’s last two projects, Saltburn and Promising Young Woman. Robbie and her LuckyChap team once again produce this one, as the star noted it was the longtime plan to release the film on Galentine’s Day.
“I was like if it was me, I’d want to go with all of my girlfriends on a Friday night — I want to have cocktails and maybe dress up a little bit, and then I’d want to go with my husband or whoever on Valentine’s the next night. So it felt like the perfect weekend for it,” Robbie said, as Elordi echoed, “It’s a day for love and it’s when everyone in the world is thinking about love; this movie, if it’s about anything, is about love.”
Charli xcx, fresh off her buzzy Sundance debut, also walked the carpet, as she explained that Fennell sent her the screenplay “at the end of 2024; I was in London in December, it was like getting dark at 4 p.m., it was freezing cold, I already felt like I was in the zone with it. She wanted me to just do one song and as soon as I read the screenplay I was kind of like, ‘I want to do a whole album, is that OK?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah sure, go for it.’ So it was a very easy flowing process.”
Wuthering Heights hits theaters Feb. 13.