To the Wuthering Heights moors we go. Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie are our new Heathcliff and Cathy, the lovers in Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic gothic novel. Here’s everything we know about the project:

What is Wuthering Heights about?

Ask your English teacher! JK. Published in 1847, the novel is a brutal and passionate love story between a Byronic antihero (Heathcliff) and Catherine Earnshaw, his forbidden, wellborn love. No spoilers, but lotta jealousy, lotta death.

Who is making the Wuthering Heights movie?

Promising Young Woman scribe Emerald Fennell wrote and directed the film, which was produced by Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment.

From left: Tom Ackerley, Margot Robbie, Archie Madekwe, Barry Keoghan, Emerald Fennell, Sue Kroll, Paul Rhys, Jennifer Salke, Jacob Elordi, Julie Rapaport, Josey McNamara, Carey Mulligan, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Latasha Gillespie, and Anthony Willis at the premiere of Saltburn held at The Theatre at Ace Hotel on November 14, 2023, in Los Angeles.

Variety/Getty Images

Who is in the cast?

Jacob Elordi, who previously starred in Fennell’s Saltburn, leads the cast opposite Margot Robbie. Alison Oliver, Shazad Latif, Hong Chau, and Owen Cooper—the breakout star of Netflix’s Adolescence—also star.

Robbie, who helped produce Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, hinted that she might be going in front of Fennell’s camera in a January 2024 interview, telling Deadline that she “would love to” star in an Emerald Fennell film and explaining, “It’s a real act of self-control not to snatch up all the roles with her scripts, because all of them are so delicious.… I also definitely never want to hold up a production. When Emerald has got a script ready to go, it’s ready to go. It’s not development. It’s not like, ‘Oh, in a year and a half we’ll start piecing this together.’ So, unless that lines up perfectly, I’m not going to be the person that holds it up.” This time, things did line up.

In her January 2026 British Vogue cover story, Robbie noted that she didn’t “want Emerald to feel like she had to say yes” to casting her in the role, though she was immediately drawn to the character in Fennell’s script. “I both understood her and didn’t, in a way that drew me to her. It’s this puzzle you have to work out.”

What is the casting controversy?

There was some initial uproar about the casting, specifically of the two leads. Some fans believed Robbie to be too “modern looking” (take that as you will) and Elordi to be a whitewashed Heathcliff, who is described as “dark-skinned” in the book.



By Elizabeth Logan

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