- - “Wuthering Heights”:“ ”Emerald Fennell Defends Her Controversial 'Version' of Emily Brontë's Classic Novel

Benjamin VanHooseFebruary 17, 2026 at 12:24 PM

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Emerald Fennell; Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in "Wuthering Heights"

Tristan Fewings/Getty; Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Writer-director Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Wuthering Heights opened to No. 1 at the box office over Valentine's Day weekend

Fennell has spoken out about her many controversial changes to the 1847 novel for her interpretation

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star in the tragic, raunchy romance

Emerald Fennell has been clear that her Wuthering Heights movie is a decidedly loose adaptation of the classic 19th-century source material.

"The book means so much to me," the writer-director said in a Fandango interview published in January, "... it's very important that everyone who loves it as much as I do feels almost a part of it."

However, added Fennell, "The thing for me is 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."

Fennell, the winner of an Oscar for writing 2020's Promising Young Woman, further explained that her Wuthering Heights movie is inspired by a version she "remembered reading" as a 14 year old that "isn't quite real" — a version "where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened" in the story.

"So," she said, "it is Wuthering Heights, but it isn't."

Margot Robbie in "Wuthering Heights"

Warner Bros.

Emily Brontë's novel, published in 1847, tells the forbidden, tragic romance between Catherine and Heathcliff. It's been adapted several times for film and television, but the latest interpretation from Fennell has been under fire from literary fans from the moment Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi were announced as the leads.

Some worried Robbie, 35, was too old for the role opposite Elordi, 28, and others argued the character Heathcliff was being whitewashed yet again for the screen. In the book, Catherine is a teen, while Heathcliff is described as "dark-skinned."

While working with Elordi on her movie Saltburn, Fennell realized she wanted him for Wuthering Heights because he "looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read," she said at the Brontë Women's Writing Festival in September, per BBC News.

Meanwhile, Robbie, a producer behind the film, was "so beautiful and interesting and surprising, and she is the type of person who, like Cathy, could get away with anything," explained Fennell at the time.

Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie in "Wuthering Heights"

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Fennell's take on Wuthering Heights is also missing several characters featured in the book (Mr. Lockwood, Hindley) — and it only covers the first half of the novel's story.

She told Entertainment Weekly of the cuts, "I think, really, I would do a mini series and encompass the whole thing over 10 hours, and it would be beautiful. But if you're making a movie, and you've got to be fairly tight, you've got to make those kinds of hard decisions."

"It's such a complicated structure, the novel, that really it would have been very, very difficult to turn that into a coherent movie because it would just be much more time," added Fennell.

Another controversial alteration involves Isabella, played by Alison Oliver. In the book, her relationship with Heathcliff is abusive — he even kills her dog at one point — yet in the film Isabella is given a degree of agency, participating in a submissive dynamic with Heathcliff.

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Elordi told EW that one provocative scene showing Isabella on all fours in a dog collar as she takes commands from Heathcliff "was Emerald kind of taking the killing of the dog and these really dark parts of the novel and putting them into this scene."

Fennell, who made a point to show Isabella winking to Nelly (Hong Chau) in the scene to indicate consent, argues that the Isabella portion still reflects the original novel.

"That scene in the book, I think that's the reason why [Wuthering Heights] was eviscerated when it came out because I think it was just so shocking to people," she told EW. "Because there's so much in what happens there that is … very, very complicated. Very transgressive — even for now it's shocking. And, obviously, I visually added some things to that scene, but it is almost all Brontë."

Not all die-hard fans of the book despise Fennell's R-rated, steamy new take, which is soundtracked to original songs from Charli xcx. Staff members at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in England, who were shown a preview screening, told The Guardian they enjoyed the film.

"It really does feel like a fever dream. ... The themes of the novel do shine through," said one staffer, as another told the outlet that it captured "some essential truths to the book and the relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy." Added another: "Is it faithful? No. Is it for purists? No. Is it an entertaining riff on the novel? Yes!"

After opening at No. 1 at the global box office over Valentine's Day weekend, Fennell's Wuthering Heights is in theaters now.

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