Emerald Fennell brings Brontë back to the big screen
Warner Bros. has released the first look at Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and it’s not pulling any punches. The Wuthering Heights trailer tees up a jagged love story with gale-force winds, clipped whispers, and the kind of stare-downs that say more than dialogue. The film hits U.S. theaters on Friday, February 13, 2026—Valentine’s Day weekend—with international rollouts beginning February 11.
Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi step into the iconic roles at the center of Brontë’s storm: Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. The footage leans into the pair’s volatility—mud-smeared, wind-lashed, and magnetized—set against the vast loneliness of the Yorkshire moors. It’s not soft-focus romance. It’s obsession, pride, and payback, mapped across low candlelight interiors and horizon-wide exteriors that make human grudges feel small and eternal at the same time.
The cast is loaded beyond the leads. Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, BAFTA winner Martin Clunes, and Ewan Mitchell round out the ensemble, signaling a version that won’t flatten Brontë’s layered social world into a two-hander. Behind the camera, Emerald Fennell directs from her own script. She’s joined by producers Josey McNamara, Fennell, and Robbie, with Sara Desmond and Tom Ackerley on board as executive producers. The film is a Warner Bros. Pictures and MRC collaboration, presented as a Lie Still & LuckyChap Entertainment production.
Fennell’s fingerprints are all over the mood. Her work tends to live in moral gray zones—people with sharp edges and sharper appetites—and this material fits like a glove. After winning an Academy Award for Promising Young Woman and stirring debate with Saltburn, she’s pivoting from modern predators to 19th-century torment. The trailer suggests she isn’t polishing the book’s roughness; she’s amplifying it. That means class rancor, hard choices, and love that curdles as easily as it blooms.
Visually, the film leans on extremes. Brassy fireplaces against stone walls. Fog that swallows the horizon. Close-ups on hands and faces as if the film is cataloging small betrayals in real time. The score, teased in quick swells, hints at strings that scrape and ache rather than soar. It’s a choice that tracks with the story’s emotional spine: romance as a force of nature, almost geological in its pressure and damage.
For Robbie, this is a sharp pivot from the sunlit pop of Barbie, back into the dramatic register she’s used in I, Tonya and Bombshell. Elordi is coming off a run of attention-grabbing turns, including Priscilla and Saltburn. Putting them opposite each other makes sense: two performers comfortable with charisma that curdles, characters who can be both irresistible and hard to forgive.
Hong Chau—fresh off Oscar recognition for The Whale—adds heft to the supporting bench, and Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, and Ewan Mitchell bring range across age and class lines. If the book’s architecture holds, expect that ensemble to matter: Wuthering Heights is a story of houses and histories as much as one severe relationship. The moors may be the headline, but the neighbors and heirs take the receipts.
LuckyChap Entertainment’s involvement is notable. The banner co-founded by Robbie, Tom Ackerley, and Josey McNamara helped steer Promising Young Woman and Barbie, a one-two punch that proved they can back filmmakers with a clear point of view and still find an audience. Pair that with MRC and a Warner Bros. machine, and you get an art-forward package with genuine reach.
Adapting Wuthering Heights isn’t simple. The novel’s frame-narrator device, time jumps, and double-generation structure challenge filmmakers to choose a path: condense and focus, or stretch and sprawl. William Wyler’s 1939 version with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon became the standard-bearer for sweeping black-and-white romantic tragedy. Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 take, with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, leaned into dark sensuality and classical intensity. Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film stripped it down to raw textures and natural light, a tactile, animal rendering of the moors. Fennell looks poised to build on the latter two—intimate and unnerving rather than tidy and nostalgic.
The tone matters because of the release date. Valentine’s Day weekend is usually crowded with glossy romances or heart-on-sleeve dramas. Brontë’s story is the opposite of a comfort watch. The timing reads as a statement: if you want uncomplicated love, look elsewhere. If you want passion that leaves scars, step into the wind. That counterprogramming angle can work when the film sets clear expectations, and this trailer does.
The studio hasn’t shared a film rating or runtime yet, and details like the composer and full department heads remain under wraps. No festival plans have been announced either. But the early positioning is clear: sell the mood, sell the stars, and trust the brand recognition of a classic that generations have argued about. That last part is key—Wuthering Heights thrives on disagreement. Are Catherine and Heathcliff victims of their world or authors of their own ruin? The film seems ready to invite the fight.
Fennell writing her own adaptation also narrows the lens. Expect shrewd choices about what to keep and what to cut. The book’s labyrinth of narration—stories within stories told by characters with agendas—works on the page, but on screen it can slow the blood flow. The trailer suggests a more immediate approach: put us in rooms with these people, let the weather and walls do the framing, and keep the camera moving with the heat.
It’s also a Yorkshire story that wants to feel grounded in place. The moors aren’t just scenery; they’re mood and motive. Shots of figures dwarfed by sky, grass bent sideways, and pathways that never seem to end do more than look pretty—they signal that isolation is a character, too. Expect that to shape how the film handles time and memory, how it treats the past as something you can’t quite leave behind, no matter who you marry or how far you move.
On the business side, the package checks all the boxes a studio wants in a prestige-leaning drama: top-tier stars, a director with recent awards heat, and a best-selling public-domain source known worldwide. If audiences respond to the trailer’s promise—romance with teeth, period detail without museum glass—this could play long through February, drawing in both literary die-hards and viewers who came for the cast.
Key dates, credits, and what the trailer signals
Here’s what’s confirmed so far, along with what the footage hints at:
- Release: International rollout begins February 11, 2026; U.S. theaters on February 13, 2026 (Valentine’s Day weekend).
- Studio and producers: Warner Bros. Pictures and MRC; a Lie Still & LuckyChap Entertainment production. Produced by Josey McNamara, Emerald Fennell, and Margot Robbie; executive producers Sara Desmond and Tom Ackerley.
- Creative lead: Written and directed by Emerald Fennell, Academy Award and BAFTA winner.
- Cast: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell.
- Setting and look: Yorkshire moors as a character—sweeping skies, hard weather, stark interiors, and a color palette that leans earthy and bruised.
- Tone: Romantic and ruthless. The trailer plays up obsession, class friction, and the hurt that echoes across families.
- Unknowns: Rating, runtime, composer, and any festival premiere plans are yet to be announced.
What’s most striking is the confidence. The marketing doesn’t apologize for the story’s jaggedness. It front-loads it. Robbie’s Catherine looks self-possessed and combustible. Elordi’s Heathcliff plays like a storm contained in a man. Around them, the supporting cast brings the pressure of neighbors who watch, judge, and remember. That’s the engine of the novel—and if the film keeps that engine humming, it won’t need to soften a thing.
For readers who grew up with Brontë and viewers coming in cold, the pitch lands the same way: it’s a love story, but not the kind that ends with a sigh. It ends with a bruise. And from the first frames of this trailer, that’s exactly the promise on offer.
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