On the lonely, untamed moors of Yorkshire—where winds lash the hills and skies seem to stretch on forever—one of literature’s darkest and most irresistible love stories is born: that of Catherine and Heathcliff. A love fed by rage and desire, by pride and resentment, and which, like the land it springs from, knows neither peace nor restraint. It is on this harsh, magnetic ground that Emerald Fennell, the Oscar-winning director of Promising Young Woman, leaves her mark once again. On February 12, 2026, Wuthering Heights arrives in Italian cinemas, promising to overwhelm audiences with the force of a hurricane. The film is a bold new interpretation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 masterpiece. Stepping into the roles of Cathy and Heathcliff is a strikingly charismatic pairing: Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. Together, they give shape to a vortex of love and destruction, raw passion and madness, transforming the quintessential romantic tragedy into a dizzying cinematic experience.
“You can’t adapt a book as dense, 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. There’s a version that I remembered reading that isn’t quite real, and there’s a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened.”
Wuthering Heights presents itself as a journey straight into the heart of Yorkshire, a land that has long safeguarded the untamed spirit of the Brontë family. Treacherous moorlands, wind-lashed stone farmhouses, the boundless valleys of the Yorkshire Dales: every real location is transformed into a living, tangible set. The landscapes captured by Oscar-winning cinematographer Linus Sandgren are not mere backdrops but fully fledged characters, with the land itself echoing the inner torment of Cathy and Heathcliff. The film celebrates Yorkshire as a force of nature—wild and sublime—from the sweeping Yorkshire Moors to the valleys of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, passing through the Brontë family’s most iconic sites, including Haworth, where the sisters were born and first began imagining worlds in turmoil.
“This is a big epic romance. It’s just been so long since we’ve had one—maybe The Notebook, also The English Patient. You have to go back decades. It’s that feeling when your chest swells or it’s like someone’s punched you in the guts and the air leaves your body. That’s a signature of Emerald’s. Whether it’s titillating or repulsion, her superpower is eliciting a physical response.”
Emerald Fennell, who also pens the screenplay, revisits Wuthering Heights with a modern, visceral touch, restoring the dark, anarchic essence of Emily Brontë’s novel. Orbiting her visionary gaze is a cast and crew of the highest calibre: alongside Robbie and Elordi appear Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, and Ewan Mitchell. The score—featuring original tracks by Charli XCX—promises to fuse contemporary energy with the gothic intensity of the original work. With Wuthering Heights, Fennell performs an act of love toward literature and the landscapes that inspired it. Her direction delves into the myth of Catherine and Heathcliff, searching for what still burns beneath the surface. And when, after the closing credits, viewers find themselves longing to breathe that air and tread those paths, it will be there—among the heights of Yorkshire—that cinema and reality converge. Ultimately, Wuthering Heights never ceases to speak to us of this: of desire that consumes, of bonds that destroy, and above all of the enduring force of a love that, indifferent to time and death, continues to promise a storm.
For further information Warnerbros.it.
