A Valentine’s Day bet on a famously toxic romance
A Valentine’s Day release for one of literature’s bleakest love stories? That’s the gamble Warner Bros. is making with Emerald Fennell’s new take on Wuthering Heights, which just unveiled its first trailer. The studio dated the U.S. opening for February 13, 2026, with international rollout starting February 11—positioning a stormy, anti-fairytale right in the middle of heart-shaped marketing season.
The teaser leans hard into desire and desperation. We see windswept moorland, candlelit rooms, and a pair of lovers who look less like a couple and more like a matched set of wrecking balls. Margot Robbie’s Catherine Earnshaw declares, “I can follow you like a dog to the end of the world,” the kind of line that lands like a vow and a warning. Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff barely speaks in the cut, but the silence feels intentional—a character built from glances, bruised pride, and a rage that never cools.
Fennell, who won an Oscar and BAFTA for Promising Young Woman and followed it with the provocation of Saltburn, writes and directs. The pairing makes sense. Brontë’s novel isn’t a swoon; it’s an autopsy of obsession, class spite, and revenge. Fennell has shown she likes stories where love and power chew each other up. The trailer’s palette—mud, bone, and storm-cloud gray—signals a world where romance looks beautiful and feels poisonous.
Warner Bros. is distributing, with the film produced by A Lie Still and LuckyChap Entertainment alongside MRC. Fennell produces with Josey McNamara (an Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner) and Robbie, with Sara Desmond and Tom Ackerley serving as executive producers. The project is now in post-production, and the early footage suggests a tactile period piece that still moves like a thriller—close-ups, panting breaths, doors slammed against wind, and a house that seems to tighten around its occupants.
What’s notable is how faithful the tone looks without feeling museum-dusty. Brontë’s book is a knot of desire and cruelty, told across generations through unreliable narrators. The trailer doesn’t spell out the structure, but it telegraphs the core: Catherine and Heathcliff, born from the same wild land, bent toward self-destruction. The landscape isn’t just backdrop; it’s temperament. Every gust feels like a dare.
Cast, creative team, and why this pairing matters
Robbie and Elordi are a deliberate, high-voltage match. Robbie, fresh off the global juggernaut of Barbie and previous Oscar-nominated turns in I, Tonya and Bombshell, plays Catherine as flinty and feverish—less ingénue, more arsonist. Elordi, who has sharpened his edge in Euphoria, Priscilla, and Saltburn, brings the physical stillness and coiled menace Heathcliff needs. It’s a star combo with both box-office draw and awards credibility, which is exactly what a studio wants when tackling a canonical text.
The ensemble adds ballast: Oscar nominee Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, BAFTA winner Martin Clunes, and Ewan Mitchell. Their roles have not been detailed, but the casting suggests a version that takes secondary characters seriously—vital, because Wuthering Heights works only if the house (and everyone trapped inside it) holds real stakes.
Fennell’s fingerprints are all over the material. In Promising Young Woman, she drilled into gendered power games; in Saltburn, she cut into class envy with a serrated smile. Brontë’s moors offer both themes at once. Heathcliff’s outsider status—racialized and classed in the novel’s subtext—has often been sanded down on screen. The new trailer doesn’t sermonize, but it frames him as the kind of man a genteel world will never let in, and the kind of man who learns to burn down the door instead.
The production is a convergence of companies that know how to make conversation-starters. LuckyChap, co-founded by Robbie with Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara, has built a track record blending commercial reach with risk-taking, from Promising Young Woman to Barbie. MRC has backed filmmaker-driven projects that punch above their budgets. With Warner Bros. steering distribution, the roll-out has the muscle to make a brooding period drama feel like an event.
And yes, that Valentine’s slot is a choice. Studios usually park meet-cute comedies and gentle romances there. Wuthering Heights is the opposite—a portrait of lovers who devour each other. Counterprogramming can work when audiences want intensity over sugar. Dropping the trailer in early September starts a slow-burn campaign that can lean into mood: dust, wind, sweat, and a house that won’t stop creaking.
For anyone keeping score, this story has a long film life. A few milestones:
- 1939: William Wyler’s classic with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon set the template for Gothic screen romance.
- 1970: Robert Fuest’s version starred Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall, leaning into wildness over polish.
- 1992: Peter Kosminsky’s adaptation with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche aimed for fidelity and fever.
- 2009 (TV): ITV’s two-part take with Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley brought a grittier edge to the small screen.
- 2011: Andrea Arnold’s raw, elemental film returned the story to mud, weather, and the shock of the moors.
Each one chose a side—romance, revenge, realism, or myth. Fennell seems to be choosing all of them: a love that looks intoxicating, a class war that never ends, and a setting that feels less like scenery and more like fate.
The trailer keeps plot specifics tight. No festivals have been announced, and the studio is saving character details for later beats. What’s clear is intent. This is a star-driven, filmmaker-led swing at a book that refuses to behave. If the footage is a promise, the film won’t either.
