Wuthering Heights adaptation starring Margot Robbie leaves fans reeling

A teaser trailer for the latest adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights has been released, and viewers have criticised it for being too "provocative". The trailer revealed that the new take on the classic 1847 novel will be more erotically charged than about pleasantries.

The upcoming Gothic erotic psychological drama film is produced, written, and directed by Emerald Fennell, who directed the controversial yet popular Saltburn (2023). Fennell has previously won an Oscar for her screenplay for Promising Young Woman, and now she directs Australian actors Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as Catherine and Heathcliff in the 2026 adaptation. The supporting cast includes Hong Chau, Martin Clunes and Owen Cooper, the Adolescence breakout star.

The trailer was set to Charli xcx's "Everything is romantic", who has created the msuic for the film.

It depicts Catherine thinking about Heathcliff, who tells her he'll follow her "like a dog till the end of the world".

Fans have not appeared to be taken with the film following the teaser release, with descriptions of it on social media calling it "visually pretty but entirely hollow & wrong".

One person on X said: "The way this didn't need to be a Wuthering Heights adaptation, like girl, if you wanted to make a horny period piece, then do that. No need to terrorise Emily Brontë."

Fans of the novel have criticised the casting of Robbie and Elordi too, with one stating: "Not to be that one friend who is too woke but bleaching the class and racial otherness out of Wuthering Heights to sell a horny whitewashed romance genuinely pisses me off."

"Emily Bronte is rising from her grave as we speak because why did they turn Wuthering Heights into fifty shades of Heathcliff and Cathy," added a third.

Early test screening viewers were able to watch the highly anticipated picture last month, leading to mixed reactions. The first watchers allegedly called the film "aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive".

One audience member who attended the test screening in Dallas said the film was "aggressively provocative" and that there were similarities with the "stylised depravity" seen in director Fennell's provocative 2023 dark comedy Saltburn.

Wuthering Heights will be released in cinemas on February 14 2026.