Fans of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights are fuming over the upcoming movie adaptation of the 19th-century classic.
Starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, the steamy trailer has already given viewers plenty to talk about.
The film, directed by Emerald Fennell, is scheduled for release on Valentine’s Day next year.
Margot takes on the role of Catherine Earnshaw, while Jacob stars as Heathcliff in the romantic drama.
Highlights
- The new Wuthering Heights trailer starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi features highly suggestive scenes, sparking fan backlash.
- The film is said to be a deliberately unromantic take on Emily Brontë’s classic novel.
- Fans compared it to 'Fifty Shades of Grey,' while others said they were curious to see it.
Published in 1847, Brontë’s novel follows two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors.
Considered a classic of English literature, the book was controversial at the time for its depictions of domestic violence and its challenge to Victorian morality.
Image credits: Warner Bros
The minute-and-a-half trailer, released on Wednesday (September 3), focuses on the s*xual relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff.
Set to Charli XCX’s Everything is romantic, the clip shows Jacob sucking Margot’s fingers twice, along with a bizarre shot of a finger sliding into a fish’s mouth.
The Australian actor appears shirtless in several X-rated power play scenes with his co-star.
Image credits: Getty/Brendon Thorne
Image credits: Getty/Jeff Kravitz
Other scenes include egg yolk running through a character’s fingers and dough being rolled suggestively.
Viewers were left stunned by the trailer, admitting that they weren’t expecting such a provocative take on the classic novel.
“This has to be the most bizarre take on Wuthering Heights I’ve ever seen,” one user noted.
“Not everything needs to be p*rn adjacent,” someone else agreed.
Another critic said the trailer was “way worse” than they expected and gave “soft p*rn” vibes.
“Wuthering Heights doesn’t need another adaptation,” a fourth stated. “We’ve seen it a million times, feels like talent wasted when there are fresh stories untold.”
The actors portray Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff in the film adaptation of the classic Emily Brontë novel
Image credits: Warner Bros
Meanwhile, others said the trailer reminded them of scenes seen in Bridgerton and Fifty Shades of Grey.
“Fifty Shades of Grey: 1800s Version,” one netizen quipped.
“Sure, take a dark, complicated and conflicted tale of love on the isolated moors, and turn it into a simplistic mush of lust for six-pack abs. The dumbing down of civilization continues,” a separate comment read.
“It kinda looks insane I might watch,” concluded someone else.
Image credits: Warner Bros
The story has been adapted to the small and big screens numerous times, including a 1970 film with Timothy Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall and ITV's 2009 two-part series starring Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley.
There have also been French, Indian, Spanish, and Japanese adaptations of the romance novel, the only one published by Emily Brontë.
The trailer features highly suggestive scenes, straying from what fans of the classic expected
Image credits: Warner Bros
Image credits: Warner Bros
Emerald Lilly Fennell previously directed the 2020 film Promising Young Woman, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
She also directed the 2023 film Saltburn, starring Jacob Elordi as an affluent student who invites another student (Barry Keoghan) to spend the summer at his family’s country house.
Saltburn featured some provocative scenes as well, including Barry Keoghan’s character, Oliver, dancing in his birthday suit.
According to World of Reel, the upcoming film had a test screening last month in Dallas, Texas, and there was a “mixed” reaction from the audience.
One viewer described the film as “aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive.” Another said Margot and Jacob’s characters were “cold and unlikable.”
The movie features a shot of a finger sliding into a fish’s mouth
Image credits: Warner Bros
The site mentions that the movie includes scenes of self-pleasure and a woman being strapped into a horse’s reins for a kinky encounter.
“The film opens with a public hanging that quickly descends into grotesque absurdity, as the condemned man ejac*lates mid-execution, sending the onlooking crowd into a kind of orgiastic frenzy,” the report reads.
Image credits: Warner Bros
It further describes the film as “the most unusual Wuthering Heights to date” and a “deliberately unromantic take on Brontë’s novel.”
The Wuthering Heights cast also includes Owen Cooper, Hong Chau, Alison Oliver, and Shazad Latif.
Asked about the film in an interview with MTV, Margot said, “Just you wait. It’s bananas. It’s great. It’s brilliant.”
Directed by Emerald Fennell, Wuthering Heights is scheduled for release on Valentine's Day
Image credits: Getty/Gareth Cattermole/BAFTA
Meanwhile, Jacob recently revealed that he was planning to take an acting hiatus until director Emerald asked him to star in the romance film.
“I was really lucky,” the 28-year-old told IndieWire. “I was going to take a break for a while, and then Emerald just very simply texted me, and you can’t run from that text.”
He went on to praise Margot’s performance, saying that the Barbie actress is “incredible in the film, she’s a livewire," and adding, "I'm so, so excited for people to see it. She’s a beautiful actor and she gave so, so much.”
"This is not what I read in high school," one user quipped
