Director Emerald Fennell has been one to stir the pot in recent years, especially thanks to her 2023 movie Saltburn getting people talking about bathwater. Her next movie isn’t stopping the controversy there. The filmmaker is making one of the biggest upcoming book adaptations on the 2026 movie release schedule with a new iteration of Wuthering Heights. But now that the trailer is here, fans of the book are livid.
The first Wuthering Heights trailer dropped on YouTube earlier this week, and it has already been viewed over six million times. A lot of the talk about the movie so far is how much different it looks from the source material by Emily Brontë. Fans of the novel are most-notably calling the version “whitewashing”. Here’s one X comment:
wuthering heights with 35 yo catherine, the whitewashed version of heathcliff. original music by charli xcx.emily brontë did not die for this shit.pic.twitter.com/zcMmq4EyOy https://t.co/s263eVNnQZSeptember 3, 2025
The protagonist of Wuthering Heights is depicted in the 1847 novel from the age of six years old to 19 years old, making 35-year-old Margot Robbie the wrong age for the role. However, fans are way more mad over Jacob Elordi’s casting as Heathcliff since he is described as having dark skin tone and a “gipsy-like” appearance that casts him as an outsider from other characters in the novel.
As another fan pointed out:
just a not so friendly reminder: Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights is explicitly dark skin and Romani, and his experiences as a man of color influence his entire character and story as a man suffering racist abuse from his adoptive familyfuck off emerald fennellSeptember 23, 2024
When Elordi was initially cast in the role, a similar reaction broke out on the internet, and Kharmel Cochrane, the movie’s casting director, has said that “English Lit fans are not going to be happy” with it. Cochrane also claimed that “it’s just a book” and “not based on real life,” and therefore shouldn’t be judged so harshly. However, those who read the book are loudly discussing how casting Elordi misses some vital themes in the book.
Reminder that Wuthering Heights is NOT just a “dark romance” but centers on RACISM and CLASSISM. Heathcliff became the way he is BECAUSE they were RACIST and treated him like SCUMSeptember 4, 2025
The trailer also teases a highly sexually suggestive film, which has previously been reported when it screened. An alleged early audience member called it “aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive,” pointing to a “BDSM-tinged encounter” involving horse reins that’s present in the trailer. Some people are suggesting that the source material was shifted in order to sell a movie that can be likened to Bridgerton.
visually pretty but entirely hollow & wrong. this has nothing to do with wuthering heights, looks more like a bodice ripper / bridgerton adaptation. idk what fennell was thinking with this project, it’s truly horrendous & insulting to the source material. just ew https://t.co/gIfPgNQus5September 3, 2025
Fennell wrote the screenplay, as well as helmed the movie, and Margot Robbie is a producer on the film after she previously produced her other two movies, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, through her LuckyChaps banner. Elordi was also the star of Saltburn before boarding Wuthering Heights.
Seriously though If emerald fennell wanted to make an erotic period drama i wish she would have just used an original story instead of whitewashing wuthering heightsSeptember 3, 2025
While the movie is flooded with negative comments on the internet, there’s this one to leave us thinking. One X user shared that the title might be in quotes because it’s less of a Wuthering Heights adaptation and more of an original concept. Do you believe this theory?
read a theory that the quotation marks on the “wuthering heights” title could mean that it isn’t a retelling & may be about a woman in a later time period reading the book and fantasizing about her own heathcliff. if that’s the case that is SUCH a fun conceptSeptember 5, 2025
Wuthering Heights is heading to theaters on February 13, 2026, just in time for Valentine’s Day!