Will Wuthering Heights be an erotic film from the 1980s? First impressions on the trailer with Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie

It happened. After months that felt like years of heated debates on social media, the first trailer for Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Cime Tempestose by Emily Brontë, has finally been released. Written, directed, and produced by the controversial filmmaker behind Saltburn and Promising Young Woman, the film first made headlines with leaked set photos showing Margot Robbie in a wedding dress. Were your fears confirmed? Either way, the movie is distributed by Warner Bros and will hit theaters in the US and UK on February 14, 2026, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Aww.

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights: the trailer

In the much-debated trailer, we see a series of intense, highly stylized vignettes and tight close-ups. Naturally, there’s the heroine, Catherine Earnshaw, played by Margot Robbie, in extreme close-up. Domestic-looking scenes alternate with fleeting, almost feral glimpses of over-the-top seduction. The contrast between a life spent waiting and the sensual release of brief, tormented encounters with Heathcliff is clear. Portrayed by Jacob Elordi, Heathcliff appears in different versions - wilder and less wild - suggesting that the story spans several years. Playing in the background is Charli XCX, who announced on Instagram that she created an original song specifically for the film.

The controversies around the film with Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie

So why the backlash? Mainly because it confirms what many feared when the adaptation was first announced. Fennell seems to have completely erased one of the novel’s key themes, starting with the casting choices. The character of Heathcliff carries with him years of abuse and violence rooted in being dark-skinned, different, racialized, and forced to the margins of society. Seen through this lens, his story with Catherine is even more cursed and disruptive. Elordi, of course, is white. To make matters worse, Brontë’s story follows the two protagonists from childhood, but here we only see them as adults.

Comparisons are flooding Twitter. Some say the trailer looks like an erotic film from the 1980s, others compare the poster to Gone with the Wind, while some call it ragebait. Many criticize its blatantly sensual perspective, which seems to leave everything else behind. Naturally, there are also complaints about the costumes, which are not historically accurate. At some point, however, we have to ask ourselves about the director’s intentions and what degree of historical and literary fidelity we can - or cannot - expect.

Okay, but what can we take from this?

The answer is becoming clearer. Kitsch is at the heart of this film, which takes Brontë’s novel as a pretext and starting point to do pretty much whatever it wants with two of today’s hottest actors. The focus, rather than the historical and social setting, seems entirely on the imagery: striking, aesthetic frames filled with clashing colors and moors at dawn, eccentric costumes and tightening corsets, sighs and moans. The costumes follow the same logic: crafted more for effect than fidelity. From the trailer, partial as it is, the film comes across as over the top, inspired by the covers of pulp romance novels and by a "lowbrow" cinema of the past that Emerald Fennell draws from unapologetically. Once we understand this intent - perhaps different from what we hoped for - can we still enjoy it anyway, with a different attitude and a lighter heart? The jury’s still out.