Some filmmakers aim for tasteful catharsis, but writer/director Emerald Fennell—who’s already proven she can provoke with jagged little pills like “Promising Young Woman” and “Saltburn”—sounds like she’s been chasing something uglier, funnier, and physically punishing with her upcoming “Wuthering Heights” adaptation. In a recent Fandango interview, the filmmaker and some of her cast, including star Margot Robbie, suggested the film is the kind of gothic romance that doesn’t just break hearts but leaves you feeling woozy and in need of a sit-down afterward.
READ MORE: The 150 Most Anticipated Films Of 2026: ‘Wuthering Heights & More
Robbie said the visceral goal was baked in early, recalling how Fennell described her dream outcome to the audience. “One of the first things Emerald said to me was, ‘I want people to cry so hard they vomit.’ I was like, ‘This sounds very appropriate, actually,’” she laughed.
From there, Robbie said the “point of difference” wasn’t about trying to out-faithful other adaptations as much as trying to reproduce a sensation—how the story hit Fennell when she first encountered it. “There’s been a lot of interpretations of ‘Wuthering Heights’ over the years… but I think the point of difference here is this is Emerald making you feel the way the book made her feel when she read it when she was younger,” she said. “I hadn’t read the book before reading the script, so the script for me was the thing that gave me that gut-wrenching devastation and love… because it’s a gothic romance. It’s intense and romantic and epic, and it will destroy you.”
Robbie even pointed to how Fennell’s approach seemed to shift the emphasis, leaning into what she found most potent rather than trying to “solve” the novel’s density for the audience. And she singled out Joseph—often an intentionally thorny character on the page—as an example of the film finding fresh heartbreak in the margins, calling the actor playing the part, Ewan Mitchell, a “gorgeous genius” in the role and adding, “In the movie, Emerald will make your heart break for Joseph.”
Fennell also addressed the decision to stylize the title with quotation marks, framing it as both a personal gesture and an honest admission about adaptation itself. “Primarily because the book means so much to me and it means so, so much to so many people,” she said. “But the thing for me is that you can’t adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this book. I can’t say I’m making ‘Wuthering Heights.’ It’s not possible. What I can say is I’m making a version of it… and so it is ‘Wuthering Heights’ and it isn’t. But really, I’d say that any adaptation of a novel, especially a novel like this, should have quotation marks.”
And if that “version” is meant to feel lived-in rather than varnished, Jacob Elordi suggested the moors shoot helped blur the line between performance and something closer to immersion.
“There were these kinds of explosive moments when we would be standing alone, sort of waiting for a scene or walking to a setup,” he said. “On the moors we shot quite sporadically… and then we’d all sprint over there and there’d be a moment where we’d be running hand in hand through the moors… where I’d look across at her and she’d be looking at me and you really realised you were looking at Catherine and she was looking at Heathcliff and in that moment we really were a part of their love for real.” He added that they’d play Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” out there as the sun went down, and it could feel like they were “catching little pieces” of the unrequited love that’s haunted the story for generations.
Robbie said that intensity bled into the everyday rhythm of production, too—especially because so much of the story is locked on those two characters.
“I get so dependent on people when I work. I’m so codependent with the people I work with,” she said. “The first couple of days on set, he would just be always in the vicinity where I was… and then on the third day… he wasn’t, and I was really unnerved and unmoored, and I felt quite lost, like a kid without their blanket.” Fennell jumped in with a laugh: “I didn’t tell him to do that. I actually had to ask him to leave the room.” Elordi, for his part, didn’t fight the premise, calling it a “mutual obsession” and saying that if you have the chance to share a set with Robbie, “you’re gonna make sure you’re within five to ten meters at all times.”
“Wuthering Heights” is set to hit theaters on February 13, 2026, via Warner Bros. Pictures. Watch the whole conversation, plus check out the first clip from the film, below.
