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- Box-Office Doubts, Vagina Hair, Hands, Irish roots and plenty more
- Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre in Concert at the Lincoln Center
- Reviews of Wuthering Heights 2026 (XIII)
- Elixir of Love
- Not Healthy But Tantalizing
- More Recent Articles
The early box office performance of Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights has generated starkly different interpretations across major entertainment outlets: Men's Journal or the New York Post appear to focus on the film's competitive position—it's still winning the weekend—and perhaps view the numbers in isolation rather than against projections: “Wuthering Heights” dominated the box office on its opening weekend, with gross sales hitting $11 million, according to The Numbers ( Friday, February 13 ; Domestic (42%) $11,000,000 in 3682 theaters. International: (58%): $15.200.000. Total: $26.000.200 BoxOffice Mojo). But The Hollywood Reporter and World of Reel compare Wuthering Heights to industry tracking, studio expectations, and the film's massive budget requirements. From this perspective, even leading the weekend represents a disappointment: Things are not looking too good for Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” at least when compared to the $50M opening that seemed practically locked just a few days ago. Fennell’s divisive romance tallied $8M on Friday — not good. Warner Bros. is praying that an onslaught of ticket buyers will show up today for Valentine’s Day. Otherwise, the film is currently looking at $37–$38M for the four-day weekend. (Jordan Ruimy)
Over the course of the movie, she had two looks for the actor: “It was ‘Jesus Elordi’ and ‘Darcy Elordi’ as Emerald and I mockingly called it,” she says about Heathcliff’s eventual transformation into a clean-shaven gentleman. “Reading the script, [the long-haired look] really rang out. I had the pleasure of knowing Jacob before [from ‘Saltburn’]; I asked him, ‘Can you just grow everything?” (...) As detailed as Fennell’s script was, the “Vagina hair” was not written in. But having worked with Fennell on “Saltburn,” Miller says, “There were talks of vagina early on,” so she wasn’t shocked when the conversation came up. Miller worked closely with production designer Suzie Davies, who said, “‘When we get back to Wuthering Heights, there’s going to be this big fissure in the wall where the house is falling apart, and it’s a vagina.'” In another scene, Isabella is given a gift for Christmas, and it’s a pop-up book; metaphorically, it resembles a vagina. Miller followed suit: “I’d seen something reminiscent of this style in my search — this plait at the back of the head. I thought, ‘If I make it smaller and we dress the hair around it.’ We just called it a ‘Vagina plait.’ That’s what’s great about working with Emerald, you show her things, ‘Oh, vagina plait. Yes, I love that.’ And we gave the hairstyles names. We really spur each other on.” (Jazz Tangcay)
Miller also explains the significance of freckles (representing exposure to the moors), the "doll braids" for Catherine's transformation at Thrushcross Grange, and the disturbing death scene where Robbie didn't wash her hair to emphasize Catherine's deterioration from sepsis poisoning. Wuthering Heights, which is in Yorkshire, needed a stable, an upstairs and a kitchen. Even though Davies built it on a soundstage, nature still needed to be ever-present. “That’s why we have a courtyard of rock around the house,” Davies explains. In addition, the arch leading to the house was inspired by Gothic architecture. Davies raised the set by two feet so she could build a drainage system. “We wanted practical effects. So there are rain rigs punched through the ceiling and there’s a tank underneath.” She kept the colors of the Wuthering Heights interiors muted and almost bruise-like. The idea of Wuthering Heights was for it to feel bruised and heavy with a brutalist vibe. During her research, Davies found the Trefor granite quarry in Northern Wales, which was abandoned and near a “big brutal structure on top of a hill.” Davies says, “It’s got nothing to do with Yorkshire, but it has the essence that Emerald wanted. Once we found that, then we started sort of layering on elements of the Yorkshire vernacular, of those big tiles.” The tiles were wet and shiny. She goes on to say, “There are a lots of modern materials used in traditional ways, and traditional materials used in unconventional ways. Everything’s flipped on its side, just to make the audience feel more uncomfortable.” (...) When Cathy is introduced to her bedroom, it’s boasted that the walls are like her skin. Again, it’s an uncomfortable moment for the character. (...) Once she knew she was onto something, Davies asked Robbie to “send high res images of her arms and veins. We printed it. We’ve slightly accentuated her veins.” Davies adds, “We had a go at doing her belly button as well above the fireplace, but that looked a little bit too weird, believe it or not.” The images of her skin were then printed onto the fabric that’s used for the padded wall panels of the bedroom. Davies adds that at the end, as there’s an overhead shot of Cathy on the bed as she is dying, her veins are prominent. “We printed her veins and everything into the carpet as well, just for that top shot, which is even more weird and uncomfortable.” (...) Take a careful look at “Wuthering Heights” and hands are everywhere, whether it’s shots of the actors, or as part of the decor. “There’s something really sexy about what they’re up to and what’s going on,” Davies says. For the hands above the fireplace, Davies says she took casts of the art department’s hands to make the ceiling roses in the fireplace and in the panels of the library. (...) The dollhouse was created by the Mattes and Miniatures crew. They built a 1/12th scale version of the Grange. Davies had the model built first, before building and designing the lifesize Thrushcross Grange, flipping her typical design process. (Jazz Tangcay)
Elle analyzes Jacqueline Durran's costumes for the film: When viewers meet Margot Robbie’s Cathy Earnshaw, who wears a palette grounded in ruby and burgundy, she aggressively cuts through the crumbling gray-brown farm home and its surrounding hills. Her wardrobe consists of modern-cut corsets with intricate embroidery, girlish checked skirts, and peplum waistcoats. They’re clothes that burn too bright to be period-precise—and that’s the point. Far from prim and proper, the pieces are as carnal as her lust for Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi). As Cathy’s pulled into the wealthy Linton household, and away from Heathcliff, the styling further amplifies, now as a rebellion against the societal expectations she finds herself boxed into. (...) On the surface, costumes are there to support character arcs and development. But Wuthering Heights is a story of trauma and mania (and the Saltburn director’s signature emotion: horniness); a faithful Georgian wardrobe would be too polite and restrained. What takes the Wuthering Heights costumes levels beyond the adaptation baseline is the brazen modernity Durran injects to create a rule-breaking wardrobe fitting of a transgressive (at least for the time period) anti-heroine. A black leather corset with red heart cutouts inspires initial provocation in a scene intended to get pulses racing, and that sets off the downward trajectory of events. (...) In a conventional period film, these inaccuracies might take viewers out of the experience. Here, the exaggerated clothes match the augmented magnitude of Cathy’s discontent, always on the verge of reaching a boiling point and overflowing into impropriety. (Irina Grechko)
The Irish Times interviews Alison Olvier, Isabella in the film. The Wrap explores 7 more Wuthering Heights adaptations available for streaming. The Stony Brook Press again repeats the arguments about casting Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff being whitewashing the character, arguing this represents a "colorblind approach" that erases important themes of racial prejudice from the story. Daily Mail informs that "fans break down in tears over heart-wrenching film's sad storyline as stunned viewers say they 'cried their eyes out'".
The Sunday Times wonders, after reading some of the reviews, what's the fun in a decorous version of the novel, without the lust and the cruelty: I read the reviews of this film in confusion. I looked at the Tomatometer — just 64 per cent — and wondered, what is it that people want? Do they just want blandness in films now? Predictable storylines? It’s true, a decorous adaptation wouldn’t have Heathcliff heaving over Cathy, rasping, “You bitch.” It wouldn’t have her dad screaming, “F*** off, you silly woman.” It wouldn’t have a public hanging scene in which a child yelps of the corpse, “He’s got a stiffy!” (complete with close-up). It wouldn’t have the prostitutes, the blood, the squelching, the snail trails, the erotic eggs or Cathy running about the moors in ever more teetering (mouthwatering) bits of couture. But who’d prefer that adaptation over this? Bourgeois is boring. There is a problem in culture at the moment of making everything predictable and small. Real art now scares us. As film dies, it’s being shut into ever more boring, ugly little formulas just to make money. It’s true (as this film shows) phone-obsessed audiences can’t even cope with subplots. The soundtrack isn’t a soundtrack any more; it’s a marketing opportunity. I get why people react against that. But why don’t they embrace the rest of it? Why don’t they see this for what it is — spectacular? Or do they think that the Brontës were just weeping, sad, limited victims — as that review points out, virgins — deserving only of insipid, careful remakes? And the less we see of posh “primal” Emerald’s sexuality, the better? (Camilla Long)
And more Sunday Times. Here, they explore the Irish roots of the novel: Any driver travelling the Belfast–Dublin road will pass a brown tourism sign pointing to the Brontë Homeland. Few turn off, and fewer still realise that behind that modest roadside marker lies a literary debate that has simmered for more than a century. The Brontës belong to Yorkshire. Yet, a generation before Haworth, before the parsonage and the wind-scoured heath, there were the fields of rural Co Down. More than 100 years ago, a Belfast writer argued, to scoffing in some quarters, that the family’s literary story began in the shadow of the Mourne Mountains, and that the backdrop inspired more than has ever been comfortably acknowledged. The writing trio are, says the Irish novelist Martina Devlin, “regarded as jewels in the English literary crown and quite rightly so”. But, she adds, “many rivers feed into the great ocean of creativity, and one of those rivers is the Irish dimension”. (...) It was the Belfast writer William Wright who, in The Brontës in Ireland, first argued in print in 1893 that the Co Down factor should be treated as much more than a biographical footnote. Drawing on local testimony among Patrick’s contemporaries, Wright suggested that his upbringing, surrounded by the Mournes, left traces in the imaginative world later fixed in Yorkshire. Wright floated the idea that Heathcliff, the feral, obsessive foundling of ambiguous background at the centre of Wuthering Heights, might represent the Irish famine-era migration or Irish “otherness” entering England en masse at Liverpool at the time, the city in which he is discovered wandering the streets. (...) Dr Robert Logan, of the Brontë Ireland society, believes Patrick’s influence has been consistently under-recognised. (...) Brontë Ireland, he notes, remains affiliated with the Brontë Society in Haworth and maintains close ties. “There’s always been a close connection,” he says. The aim, he suggests, is not to redraw the map of literary ownership, but to ensure the opening chapter is more widely known and never forgotten. Devlin agrees, saying: “It doesn’t detract from the Brontës, it adds to our understanding.” (Jason Johnson)
Forbes explores where Wuthering Heights was filmed and how to visit. People compares the Wuthering Heights 2026 cast side-by-side with the "original" 1939 Stars. The Telegraph explains that the 'shocking' first scene of the film was scaled down after the first previews. Who knows? The Everygirl ranks all the songs of Charli XCX's Wuthering Heights album. Their best? Dying for you. Vermilion County First briefly reviews the album: This project marks a pivotal shift for Charli XCX, signaling her transition into a more cinematic and experimental era. By revisiting one of literature’s most intense stories, she joins a broader conversation about how classic themes of obsession and volatility can be reinterpreted for a modern audience. The result is a body of work that feels both ancient and futuristic, solidifying her place as one of pop’s most versatile voices. (Mariana A.) The Record-Patriot publishes an audio review of the album. By the way, a new song has been released on video: Always Everywhere. Bloomberg considers the film an example of the power of unoriginal art. InStyle explains how "really" people dressed in Georgian times. An unmissable event today in New York: a one-night-only concert of Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre. The Musical:
Manhattan Concert Productions Wu Tsai Theater, David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center Sunday, February 15, 2026 at 8:00 pm
Manhattan Concert Productions’ Broadway Series returns with a one night only concert performance of Jane Eyre, the sweeping musical based on Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel. Under the direction of Tony Yazbeck (Stage Director) and Brad Haak (Music Director), experience Paul Gordon and John Caird’s moving adaptation brought to life by the New York City Chamber Orchestra and a 400-voice chorus. With a lush, symphonic score and soaring vocals, this powerful story of resilience, passion, and self-discovery shines in concert form. Featuring Broadway stars Erika Henningsen (Just in Time, Mean Girls) as Jane Eyre and Ramin Karimloo (Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera) as Edward Fairfax Rochester, alongside Natalie Allen, Clara Bishop, Caroline Bowman, Runako Campbell, Robert Curtis, David Michael Garry, Jada German, Marc Kudisch, Ada Manie, Austin Scott, Emily Skinner, Elizabeth Stanley, Christianne Tisdale, and Brittany Nicole Williams, this special event celebrates one woman’s indomitable spirit and quest for love and belonging.
Brontë's tormented tale has been repackaged and reimagined for a new generation, and it's spectacular. (...)Fans of classic literature are well aware of the fact that ‘romance’ and ‘gothic romance’ are not even close to being synonymous terms. The book is not a love story, and this film is not romantic. But disguising it as such is a clever way of emphasising the oft-blurred line between care and abuse. Being gaslit into perceiving oppression as protection, jealousy as loyalty, or vengeance as passion is built into many abusive dynamics. Hijacking expectations to control the audience’s emotional lens is an impressive feat that applies to the movie itself, as much as it does the marketing. Don’t see this movie expecting it to be ‘the greatest love story of all time’, because it’s not. But it might be one of the most moving tales in classic literature, uniquely expressed in hyper-stylised, meta-referential, cinematic glory. (Nanci Nott) Fennell might not be of the same level of Shakespeare — she’s far from it, as she’d surely admit. But much like Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet,” she’s not trying to retell this famous tale; she’s reimagining it as the outsized, grand spectacle it has become in both public consciousness and personal affection. Her “Wuthering Heights” is a great film because it doesn’t try to be anything more than a feeling, transmitted with the utmost sincerity and beauty. It’s that same feeling that’s so deeply impactful for the viewer, the one that will make them want to go straight from the movie theater to the bookstore. “Wuthering Heights” is a reminder of just how effective and everlasting a novel can be; of the places it can take us and the multitude of emotions it can make us feel. If love is a complicated, beautiful and grievous thing, so is Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights.” How very fitting that the habitually plugged-in crowd tried to make sense of those quotation marks surrounding Fennell’s title. Brontë’s book is completely divorced from modern technology. It lives and dies by how much it’s able to make the reader feel. And in her captivating interpretation, Fennell makes her viewers feel everything. (Coleman Spilde) Emerald Fennell has created an unapologetic maximalist take on a classic. This new version of Wuthering Heights is breathtaking, erotic, confusing, and immersive. Elegant yet brutal, this is a romantic extremity with high-quality filmmaking that deserves to be seen on the big screen. While not designed for everyone, this is a challenging work with a unique point of view that elevates what literary film reinventions can be. (Vin) Visually, the film is striking. The estate of Wuthering Heights feels cold and isolated, while Edgar’s home is warm and refined. The contrast reflects the emotional divide between safety and passion. Fennell doesn’t soften the darker elements of the story. Heathcliff’s bitterness and Cathy’s selfishness remain intact. But instead of pushing the audience away, the film draws us in. We may not approve of their choices — but we feel their pain. (Rob Suther)
By the time the gothic melodrama ends, the movie is everything Fennell promised that it would be. From the hauntingly grotesque chemistry between Robbie and Elordi to Charli XCX’s anguished songs to Linus Sandgren’s sweeping cinematography to Suzie Davies’ unsettlingly unrestrained production design to Jacqueline Durran’s bold, fantastical costumes, the story feels as heightened as any 14-year-old’s imagination. Ultimately, it’s unnnerving. It’s overly dramatic. It’s incredibly horny. And it’s a reminder that a toxic love like Cathy and Heathcliff’s was never intended to be romantic; it was intended to be captivating. Fennell’s adaptation and Robbie and Elordi’s performances ensure this holds true. (Sarah Hunter Simanson)
CBS12:
Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" is less fan fiction or teen girl dreamscape than it is an ode to the romance genre. The marketing from the film implies such, featuring a poster that poses Robbie and Elordi in dramatic embrace, immediately reminiscent of the poster for "Gone with the Wind." (...) Maybe this film was made for us, by one of us. It doesn't need to make perfect sense by every viewer if it makes those of us willing to give it a chance feel something more. (Candice McMillan)
Director Emerald Fennell creates a visual scape that creates images of the characters’ feelings. At times you feel giddy, disdainful and then you feel cold chills and despondent with the film’s macabre setting and gawdy visuals. But these are to evoke specific reactions, set the mood for exactly what the characters are feeling. Certain frames look like they belong in a horror film. And then others feel like they’d fit into a period costume drama. Yes the drama feels staged at times in this genre bender, because that is how Fennell chooses to deliver the ‘angry love’ of the story. Heathcliff, a street urchin, growing up as a ‘toy’ akin to a ‘servant’ in the Earnshaw household, has just one silver lining to his life. His uncorrupted love for Cathy. But when he ‘hears her rebuke his feelings he goes batshit crazy. His idea of revenge is archaic, idiotic but still holds his glimmer of hope that he’ll be with his childhood love. Where the film actually falters is during the sequences of Heathcliff and Cathy’s extramarital affair. The writing and editing feels a little rushed and underwhelming. It comes during the third act of the story and that’s why it feels like an absolute betrayal for someone who may have invested in the otherwise, deep and manic love story. Overall, Wuthering Heights is, if nothing else, an ambitions and self-assured film. Personally, I quite liked it, but I could see why others might not, considering it sloppy, disjointed and containing too much of Fennell’s vision and not enough of Bronte’s. In the end though, I can’t do otherwise than praise a film that has such a strong authorial imprint and I suspect that even many film fans that don’t like this film’s aesthetic will at least find some value in giving it a look. (Tim Fak)
With a solid cast and stunning visuals, Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" is a perfectly fine film that relies more on the production value than its source material. Hopefully, seeing this on Valentine's Day will make you appreciate the healthy, stable relationships in your life. (Joseph A. Wulfsohn) Some moments are shocking, both in their fun but also in their grossness. While it makes the movie an artful and thoughtful affair, it also means it may not be an appropriate choice for a romantic date night for Valentine’s Day this year, which is clearly what the marketing has been positioning the film as for months. In all, Wuthering Heights is an effective piece of cinema that’s made with great care and dedication. Whether weirdness is part of your own love story will greatly influence how much enjoyment and entertainment value Fennell’s newest work will bring you. (Tyler Collins)
I'd say if you can get over the fact it does take some liberties as a modernisation of a novel from 1847, Charli XCX's soundtrack for example immediately feels out of place but grew on me as it went along which I think i even outright appreciate looking back on it now, then "Wuthering Heights" is a gorgeously put together treat for the senses. There's not quite the level of devilish debauchery on display that Saltburn had going for it, nor does it have the biting satire of Promising Young Woman, so with that I'd say for me it's easily Emeral Fennell's weakest so far. But she still shows plenty of that talent for filmmaking that put her on the map to begin with and if that's not enough there's enough eye candy outside of the technical stuff in the form of Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie to keep everyone happy this Valentine's Day. (Kieran Battams) With a greater emphasis on sexuality, even during scenes that depict mental and physical cruelty, this is where the director of Saltburn leans into her strengths, resulting in a problematic tone. You can see this dysfunction from its opening minutes that features someone getting hung in front of the public that starts acting like they’re in a rave, all the way through the climax where tragedy moves at a snail’s pace. For all the lavish visuals from DP Linus Sandgren and the exquisite production design from Suzie Davies that evokes the work of Derek Jarman, you can applaud the modern ambition that defines itself from other versions of Wuthering Heights, even if it amounts to nothing. (Rory Wilding) This is an abridged adaptation, equal parts understandable and baffling. If you’ve read the book, you probably have a good sense of where the film chooses to end. Robbie and Elordi play these moments with great care and emotion, aided by several genuinely moving callbacks to their time together as children. It can’t quite salvage the movie as a whole, but it’s an affecting, devastating moment to end on. And it’s nice to have hot people on screen being hot together. I don’t say that lightly or glibly. There’s been a dearth, in recent years, of onscreen lust and passion, replaced, instead, with empty noise machines and extended cinematic universes and neuroses masquerading as flirting. “Wuthering Heights” brings the heat — even if it can’t quite justify why it lit the match in the first place. (Johanna Lester)
Wuthering Heights isn’t the period drama that we all wanted back on our big screens, but truthfully it isn’t far off from one that I’d love to see. Emerald Fennell works with many talented people behind the scenes to help the movie be one of the best films we might get visually this year, especially for a movie of its kind. It’s safe to say that she should easily team up again with everyone involved, but maybe next time just make an original movie to save herself the controversy. (Christopher Mills) Bad ones
Gone is the ghost story — Cathy, tap, tap, tapping on the window. Fennell is less interested in the metaphysical aspects of the tale than the straightforwardly physical: men are whipped and women are bridled. Characters plunge their fingers suggestively into jelly, dough and egg yolk. Fennell is after — and gets — giggles, not gasps. During the love scenes you half-expect the camera to pan and reveal Leslie Nielsen caressing a potter’s wheel like the Naked Gun spoof of Ghost. (...) Like her other films, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is a work of posh-girl provocation: intent on pushing as many buttons as it can, mistaking Brontë’s effect for her intent. Provocation is just people-pleasing upside down — it has the same empty rattle. A wind whistles through the centre of this film, and not the Brontëan kind. (Tom Shone)
Keith and the Movies: (2 out of 5 stars) The rest of the story erratically bops from point to point, force-feeding us a wild array of emotions that always feel more contrived than organic. Following along is never easy because there’s never a steady measurement of passing time. Worse are the gaps in the story that lead to bizarre character shifts with little buildup, as well as undercooked relationships that never make sense. This is especially true for the increasingly mopey second half. (...) Whatever the goal, it’s hard to see 2026’s “Wuthering Heights” pleasing longtime fans of the novel or drawing new fans to it. But even if you take away its literary inspiration, Emerald Fennell’s latest even fails as a simple melodrama. The choppy storytelling impacts everything, including the characters who are left shuffling through ambiguity and absurdity. This despite the efforts of Robbie and Elordi, and great supporting turns from Alison Oliver and Hong Chau. (Keith Garlington)
Even other adaptations of Brontë’s work, while not all of which were by-the-book adaptations, were much more palatable than Fennell’s. In the years since, it seems almost as though Fennell has forgotten about the consequences of Heathcliff and Catherine’s sadomasochism and selfishness, as she ends the film with Catherine’s death. There is no pining, no ghosts, and the “passion” is laughable at best. A bit on the nose, but to show how much Catherine’s father drank, the scene where he is found dead takes place with a background of mountains of bottles. Or the very odd “dog play” that is put on show for Nelly (Hong Chau) when she comes to take Isabella (Alison Oliver) away from Wuthering Heights after her marriage to Heathcliff. Even the iconic “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” or the “You said I killed you — haunt me, then” are delivered with such lacklustre that one almost misses them if they are not on the lookout for it. I would have been fine had Fennell not dragged the name of a beloved author into her “retelling”. Slap on an avant-garde sticker along with a five-foot restraining order from Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and the film would not have been so triggering. Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is confusing at best, a rage-bait at worst. For lovers of Brontë or literature, I have but one advice when watching Fennell’s work: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. (Insha Jalil Waziri)
Petaluma Argus-Courier: If by some miracle (perhaps by closing their eyes) viewers can get past the repulsive production design, they are left with an even worse script to follow along with.
The only oasis of competence in this ocean of mediocrity is Hong Chau as a quietly nuanced Nelly, Cathy’s housekeeper. Every time she appeared I thanked the gods there was finally something worth watching.
What was Emerald Fennell (“Salt Burn,” (sic) “Promising Young Woman”) thinking?
If she had gone totally unhinged, and given us a Gothic-vibe smut-fest B-movie, that would at least have been something creative with the source material that a lot of people would enjoy for Valentine’s Day weekend. She could have leaned into the fact this is a terrible film and allowed it to be somewhat fun to watch by owning that fact. (Alexa Chipman) The book’s influence is only a tiny whisper behind the big spectacle of making a classic shiny, sexy and new. That feels like the only point to the film – to shock the audience by being raunchy and flat-out strange. Oddity can make an already interesting film great, but here it overpowers the story until it stops having meaning. There were parts of the film that evidently tried to make the audience shed a tear or two, but the writing was ridiculous. None of the characters’ struggles are made substantial enough for the audience to care if they achieve their wants or not. This loose adaptation turns powerhouse actors like Robbie and Jacob Elordi, who plays the rugged adopted brother turned love interest Heathcliff, into laughable soap-opera-esque characters that only young teenagers could relate to. (Bela Parrett)
The same student newspaper publishes a much more positive review of the companion album by Charli XCX:
A curious inmersive "theatrical cocktail" is being performed these days in Kennesaw, GA:
Greenlight Acting Studios presentThe Cigar Cellar 2500 Cobb Pkwy NW, Kennesaw, GA 30152 2/12/2026 - 2/15/2026
An immersive theatrical cocktail experience inspired by the greatest love stories ever told. Guided by a company of storytellers, guests travel through love in its many forms, from the careful restraint of propriety to forbidden passion, to madness, magic, and finally devotion that endures. Each chapter of the evening is paired with a handcrafted cocktail, an elixir designed to echo the emotional landscape of the story being told. Guests sip as scenes unfold, allowing taste, story, and atmosphere to intertwine. This is not simply a show to watch, but a journey to be experienced—by candlelight, by voice, and by glass. Chapter One (Love and Manners) of the "cocktail" presents scenes from Jane Eyre among others. Further information in Broadway World. It’s Not Wholesome. It’s Not Healthy. But ‘Wuthering Heights’ Is Incredibly Romantic. And now some truths. No matter what you think about Emerald Fennell's film or any of the previous adaptations. Nothing is able to match Emily Brontë's What was once shocking becomes quaint: That’s how it goes. The Charleston now looks like a silly dance, Elvis is just a sweaty guy, nobody’s fainting while watching screenings of “The Exorcist” anymore and jazz is now the province of turtlenecked nerds. We’re assured there was a time when van Gogh’s paintings horrified audiences, but today reproductions of them hang in college dorm rooms. This process is not tragic; as these things lose their power to shock, they reveal new virtues. Nothing stays boundary-pushing forever — except “Wuthering Heights.” If Heathcliff and Catherine are too wicked for heaven, at least they will not be alone in hell. Their love destroys everything in its path, but it is also their redemption. Neither can live among other human beings without lashing out at them, but they can live together in the wilderness. Brontë gives them as happy an ending as they can stand, implying that their ghosts are reunited in death. Is this story healthy? No. But is it romantic? Very. (B.D. McClay)
Monocle talks with a couple of scholars trying to unpack Wuthering Heights 2026: To unpack the Saltburn director’s take on Wuthering Heights, as well as the role of decadence in the novel and why it is so misunderstood, Georgina Godwin was joined on Monocle on Saturday by Dr Jessica Gossling and Dr Alice Condé of the Decadence Research Centre at Goldsmiths, University of London. (...) Mariella Bevan and Georgina Godwin: How true is the film to the book? And does it matter? Jessica Gossling (JG): Adaptations are really interesting because of what they tell us about their cultural moment, and so what Fennell has decided to leave out or keep in is quite fascinating. If you’re going to watch this film because you love the novel, you’ll be disappointed. But if you want to watch it because you love the vibes and the essence of what we think of as Victorian – this kind of oversexed, bodice-ripping lusciousness – then I think it’s a great film. Alice Condé: I agree. It’s not a faithful adaptation, and I don’t think Fennell has claimed it is such. But she says that she was trying to adapt the novel to correspond with her first reading of it at age 14. It’s a complex, nuanced novel, which actually at its heart is not a romance. It’s incredibly harrowing to read. Every page you turn, something more horrible happens to the characters. But what Fennell has done is take forward the enduring romantic appeal of Heathcliff and Cathy’s doomed relationship, and that is something that many younger people might respond to on first reading. M.V & G.G.: Do you think the novel is capable of doing psychological damage to little girls or teenagers who found Heathcliff incredibly sexy and the story just compelling? AC: That trope has persisted. Personally, that wasn’t what I took from it at all. What endured with me was the ghost scene at the very beginning of the novel, where what we see is Heathcliff’s outpouring of emotion. For a century very much known for its [particular] kind of emotional restraint, it’s incredibly groundbreaking and quite sensitively done on Brontë’s part. M.V & G.G.:What about the controversial race-blind casting? JG: It’s so different to the novel that the casting decision is the easiest thing to latch on to in terms of what’s problematic about this adaptation. But also, Fennell strips out the sibling rivalry, incest and animal abuse, so there are lots of other important topics that are also removed. The only thing that remains [of the novel] in the film are some Sparknotes quotes and everything else is very much about how we feel Wuthering Heights should be. For example, there are references to Kate Bush in there. Fennell’s Heathcliff is completely chastised; he’s not the wolfish creature that Brontë describes at all.
Entertainment Weekly enters the club of websites and magazines listing the (many) changes between Emerald Fennell's film and Emily Brontë's novel. ScreenRant also quotes Emerald Fennell explaining how she changed the ending of the novel and why she did it. The ending is also the subject of this USA Today article. The Observer analyses Jacob Elordi's Yorkshire accent and how he learnt: It was Lovesong by Ted Hughes that helped the Australian actor Jacob Elordi perfect his Yorkshire accent. The poem in question is not an account of soft affection: this love is all-consuming, violent, dysfunctional. (Xavier Greenwood) Locals like poet Mark Ward and dialect experts praise the film's accent work for capturing Yorkshire essence without overly broad dialect that might alienate viewers, noting historical shifts from industrial grimness to modern tourism spots like the Brontë Balti House. Ultimately, it argues that passion trumps accent authenticity in the story's enduring appeal of lust, jealousy, and betrayal. The Sunday Times thinks that this is the time to visit Brontë country, and not only because of the film: Emily Brontë’s only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847) is one of the great one-offs of English literature — a ferocious story of all-consuming childish love, told in fierce, attacking prose. This gothic melodrama set on the Yorkshire moors has inspired generations of rich reveries and wild interpretations, from Laurence Olivier to Kate Bush to the latest by the director Emerald Fennell, whose screeching bodice-ripper will surely send a new wave of drama girls north in the footsteps of Cathy and Heathcliff.
Wuthering Heights was the book that made me a serious reader. My English teacher gave it to me when I was 11 years old, and I was intoxicated by this account of love as a terminal illness. Yet that’s not what I remember drawing me in; it was the picture conjured of two families, the Earnshaws and Lintons, separated by four miles of moorland but entangled — for generation after generation — in a web of revenge. I devoured the book in three days, relishing its landscape of sweeping heather, blanket bog and acid grassland.
More than thirty years later, on a wet and foggy January day, I climb the steep cobbles of Haworth, the little market town near Bradford in West Yorkshire that formed the Brontë sisters’ imaginations. One of Emily’s great achievements is to have forever transformed the grotty weather here. Conditions that elsewhere may be deemed a bit drab, if not depressing, feel the ideal romantic backdrop. (Johanna Thomas-Corr) “Wuthering Heights,” originally published under the male-sounding pseudonym Ellis Bell, was slammed by reviewers, who denounced it as coarse, brutal and irreligious. After her death at 30, Emily was "defended" by her older sister Charlotte, who resorted to claiming that her sister was just a child of nature, living secluded in rural Yorkshire. She really "didn’t get" polite society. But Emily has had historical payback after those disapproving reviews. “Wuthering Heights” stays reliably in print, thanks to people like me, who teach it, and thanks to the filmmakers, who periodically boost it lucratively into the headlines. The new film beckons. But I hope that moviegoers will turn again to the book: a real Gothic shocker, which entertains while inviting us to ponder the dangerous and wonderful strength of human feeling, to consider the possibility that individual human identity is permeable, and that we may really be able to live in each other’s hearts and minds — perhaps forever. (Rosemary Haskell)
Stylist goes for the Brontë blonde, which apparently " is the low-maintenance shade you need to save for your next appointment". Bustle lists "Chic Items To Channel The Margot Robbie-Approved Brontë-Core Trend". Travel and Tour World sings the wonders of Hawort, "a hidden gem you must visit". Well, not so hidden, really. The Daily Telegraph has more pictures of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi and the Australian promotion of the film. Deadline publishes a box office update of the film: SATURDAY AM UPDATE: Warner Bros/MRC’s Wuthering Heights is heading to an $80M opening around the globe. On the foreign side with an expected $40M in 79 territories, that’s slightly ahead of the likes-for-likes start of The Housemaid‘s ($34.8M) in its first foreign weekends. Some rivals believe the Emerald Fennell-directed take of the Emily Brontë novel will fall into the mid $30M range at the end of four days stateside, but the see-saw between domestic and foreign is expected to land at $80M, which is the same exact price that Warners won the Margot Robbie-Jacob Elordi package for over Netflix. Last night was $11M (including $3M previews). Warners sees a path to $40M in four days. The question in North America remains walk-up business and an expansion of the audience as 55% of the audience bought their tickets in advance. Also, men only gave the pic a 39% definite recommend next to 54% women. (Anthony D'Alessandro) Variety interviews Charlotte Mellington, who doesn't seem too eager to actually read Wuthering Heights:
Alex Ritman: Had you read the book already? C.M.: I had not read the book. I probably should’ve. I got a copy of it but I think I started the first page and my eyes started to swim. But it’s Emerald’s version of “Wuthering Heights.” A.R.: Have you read it now? C.M.: Ha! No. But when I was auditioning I did try to watch some of the other on-screen versions!
The Wrap lists all the songs in the film. More Recent Articles
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