Wuthering Heights

After Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, Emerald Fennell tackles a cornerstone of English literature and pries it open from within. Her Wuthering Heights, released theatrically on February 13, 2026 through Warner Bros, shifts the novel's center of gravity from the gothic moors to an almost predatory physical passion between Catherine and Heathcliff, played by Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi with chemistry critics have called magnetic. An original score and album by Charli XCX helped turn the film into a cultural event well before release, fueling viral trailers and social media debate over its brazenly contemporary aesthetic layered onto a nineteenth century text.

The R rating for sexual content comes as no surprise from a director increasingly fascinated by desire, obsession and power imbalance, rendered through lush, never explicit, constantly charged imagery. Critics were split, some praised Fennell's nerve in restoring the novel's original erotic charge, often softened in earlier adaptations, others criticized the liberties taken with the source material, calling the film more a provocative style exercise than a faithful adaptation. What remains beyond dispute is the sumptuous cinematography, a supporting cast including Hong Chau, Shazad Latif and Alison Oliver, and the film's ability to pull the period erotic drama back into the mainstream conversation, cementing Fennell as one of the boldest and most talked about voices in contemporary sensual cinema.