The Mancunion discusses Charli XCX's decision to soundtrack Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights. The follow up to a career-defining album is one of the most challenging projects of an artist’s career. Charli xcx, born Charlotte Aitchison, now faces the problem of producing a work that stands up next to BRAT, one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the twenty-first century; an album that sparked the type of monocultural event which is growing increasingly rare in the age of algorithmic media consumption. Her decision to soundtrack Emerald Fennel’s upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights was clever in sidestepping this problem – rapacious fans are satisfied, whilst the question of their acceptance of the album into the official Charli xcx canon can be kept tactically unclear until it is confirmed beyond doubt. That being said, the album’s first offerings suggest that neither her critical appraisal, nor her ethos of artistic innovation are at an end. The lead single, ‘House’, featuring The Velvet Underground legend John Cale, is everything anyone could hope for from such a high-calibre collaboration – brooding, string-laden, and appropriately gothic. The track positions itself as the evil sibling of ‘Everything is romantic’, BRAT‘s techno-inspired centrepiece. Both culminate in a repeated lyrical refrain, but while the former commands its listener to “fall in love again and again”, the new track ends with a foreboding chant by Charli and Cale: “I think I’m gonna die in this house”. Again, the sacred duo of art-pop instrumentation is employed – synths and strings – but to evoke a much darker sonic landscape. The strings creep and scrape instead of gliding, rising to a thundering crescendo rather than a euphoric climax. Here, Charli trades her beloved vistas of Pompeii and Capris for those of the desolate Yorkshire Moors – and she has never sounded better. Follow up single ‘Chains of Love’ is the milder of the two offerings. Producer Justin Raisen, who worked on her debut and sophomore albums, is tapped to co-produce with Charli and Finn Keane. The thudding drums and synth swells recall her earlier work (think 2014 smash ‘Boom Clap’) but this isn’t to say the track feels stagnant. In fact, it is refreshing to hear the songwriter rediscover her aptitude for composing an out-and-out ballad, putting the full theatricality of her voice, which is often minimised on BRAT, to good use. The teasers so far suggest that we can expect the Wuthering Heights soundtrack to be light on serotonin, but heavy on sentiment. As she steps out of the club and into the countryside, Charli XCX demonstrates that she is a musical chameleon whose trademark green is making its transition to murkier hues effortlessly. (Jack Davison)
A contributor to Her Campus has just read Wuthering Heights for the first time. A book that I’d always wanted to read was Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. From its picturesqueness, to a whirlwind romance, to the vast descriptions of the moors of northern England, this novel captures the beauty of the fall aesthetic. The novel explores the complicated love of Catherine and Heathcliff as their dynamic defies social conventions and personal identity. I finally read this famous classic after many years of hearing many tidbits of the story. If you’ve never read it like me, or want to get back into this novel, it’s a perfect one to blend with colder weather. Wuthering Heights invites readers not just for the plot, but for the mood that is haunting and passionate with its characters and depictions of nature. (Sienna Foster) Express includes the novel on a list of 'The top 6 classic fiction books you’ve never read'. Forbes (Spain) discusses the big-screen comeback of classic stories such as Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein and Dracula.
The Busan Museum (부산광역시립박물관) is currently hosting " Secrets of the Masters: From Shakespeare to 500 Years of Literature and Art," running through January 18, 2026, in collaboration with the UK's National Portrait Gallery. This exhibition brings together 137 items, including portraits of 78 British literary giants, along with handwritten manuscripts, letters, and rare first editions. The exhibition features works by Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, and J.K. Rowling, among others. Visitors can see Shakespeare's First Folio, Dickens' handwritten manuscript of " Great Expectations," and Rowling's first edition of Harry Potter with her own illustrations. At the exhibition's conclusion, visitors can listen to poetry readings through headphones and transcribe favorite passages from the displayed works onto postcards.
The exhibition includes several Brontë-related items. The pillar portrait, for instance. In the middle of the exhibition hall, visitors will find a recreation of the sisters' dining room at the Haworth parsonage, complete with period furniture, patterned wallpaper, bookshelves, a fireplace, and a dining table set with teacups and manuscripts—offering a glimpse into the space where the novels were written. Although the "window" is given a far too joyful view.
Sources: Busan.com
Aleteia lists "The books on BBC’s 'Top 100' list that no Catholic should miss," including Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and And we’d also add The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Brontë, 1848), which is not only a gripping story but also an important piece of history, as it was among the first novels to grapple with domestic violence, alcoholism, and other critical social issues from a woman's perspective — showing how a good person might have responded to such problems in that place and time. (Theresa Civantos Barber) And, of course, we still have news outlets talking about the Wuthering Heights trailer, poster or the Charlie XCX songs: t2online, El Diario, Bleeding Cool, Moclova, Music is to Blame, musically, The Playlist, Entertainment Now, Minuto Uno ... Ultimately, the success of this adaptation depends on whether Fennell’s erotic, hyper-stylised approach can illuminate, rather than overshadow, the novel’s psychological and emotional complexity. Wuthering Heights is not just a story of passion; it is a study of trauma, social suffocation, generational damage, and the impossibility of love under violence. If Fennell can channel these themes without reducing the narrative to spectacle, her version may genuinely reintroduce Brontë’s wildness to a contemporary audience. If not, it risks becoming another example of her excess in visual style leading to a controversial, but thematically hollow film. Either way, she is taking a modern approach to the tone and mythology of Brontë’s works. The only question now is whether the moors will bend to her vision or simply swallow it whole. (Daniella Adetoye in Varsity) El Confidencial (Spain) repeats the idea that the Brontë waves are a new hair trend.
Wuthering Heights also plays with us at a deeper emotional level. We know it must all end very badly but we’re entranced. The star-crossed lovers will destroy one another and everyone else who comes into their orbit – here is the very antithesis of transactional dating and swiping left. Writing about the anti-hero Heathcliff in British Vogue this week, author Olivia Petter said she just might be craving Bronte’s maddening breed of passion. “I can’t tell you how many mediocre dates I’ve been on this year, swapping the same insipid stories about siblings and pets, hoping for a sudden spark of excitement and settling for its not being a complete disaster,” she said. This is living, breathing, pulsating desire set against the backdrop of one of the wildest of places on earth, the moors which are almost a character in themselves in every depiction of Wuthering Heights. This wildness too is one of the story’s greatest appeals: this is not safe, cultivated territory. The moors are alive and spirited, the perfect backdrop for the wildlings of Heathcliff and Cathy to get lost. More than anything, it’s a story that taps deeply into a vein of fear, showing us what happens when we choose one thing over another. Cathy chooses a path of privilege and wealth when she forsakes Heathcliff and chooses Edgar Linton over the wildness of Heathcliff; the result is carnage. (Kathy Donaghy)
The Spectator dares to ask what if Wuthering Heights 2026 results are not good?: Every few months or so, a new film comes along and anyone interested in the art of cinema braces themselves, because The Discourse will inevitably accompany it. There is no clearer candidate for fevered discussion next year than Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of Wuthering Heights, which is released, with smirking predictability, on Valentine’s Day. Ever since the film was announced, there has been controversy over everything from the casting of the Caucasian Jacob Elordi to play Heathcliff (who is referred to in Emily Brontë’s original novel as a “a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect”) to the excessively clean and stylish-looking clothes worn by Margot Robbie’s Catherine Earnshaw. When reports of strong sexual content, including BDSM and hanging-induced ejaculation, leaked from a test screening, word got out: Fennell had made her film again. (...)
So there is every chance that Wuthering Heights could be another artistic wash-out. But it could also be like Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette or even the don of all period films, Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon: a fascinating, breathtakingly original take on the material. Not long to go now, in any case, and then The Discourse will have its day. And until then, we’ll always have Kate Bush: “Heathcliff, it’s me! Cathy!” Etc, etc. (Alexander Larman) According to The Times, Brigitte Reimann’s 1956 novella, Woman in the Pillory:This dark wartime love story reads like a German Wuthering Heights. (...) Predictably, something bubbles up between the nervy blonde woman and the dark, brooding stranger (a pairing of the Wuthering Heights variety) and as the two find time to talk out of Frieda’s earshot, with Alexei “carefully putting one word on top of the other so that his shaky blocks of language didn’t collapse”, their affections grow. (Ceci Browning)
AnneBrontë.org has an extra post on 'Charli XCX And Wuthering Heights' and on YouTube, The Brontë Sisters has a video of an overnight stay at the Brontë Birthplace in a Casper (sorry, Garry) mood. Next year, just before her Wuthering Heights hits theaters, Emerald Fennell will make her mark on the novel as well. Simon & Schuster is launching a Female Filmmakers Collection that will feature rereleases of classic literature — each volume will be curated by a different director, tasked with curating a movie-inspired cover, writing a new foreword, and imbuing the paperback with cinematic references and Easter eggs. Fennell’s edition of Emily Brontë’s 1847 tome (originally published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell) will kick off the collection and hit shelves Feb. 3, 2026. The Hollywood Reporter is exclusively revealing Fennell’s new cover, as well as a sneak peek of the foreword that Fennell wrote for the edition, which will offer insights into her creative vision for the highly anticipated feature film. “It is too slippery, too wild, too good to distill into two hours of film,” writes Fennell. “Instead what I have attempted to do is adapt my own experience of reading it for the first time. It is an adaptation of a feeling: my first disemboweling by the baby god.” (Seija Rankin)
From that many sites understand, like The Telegraph, that ' Wuthering Heights film won’t be faithful to the ‘sexy, horrible’ book. Wuthering Heights won’t be a faithful adaptation of the book, the director of the latest remake has warned. Emerald Fennell, 40, said that Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel was “too slippery” to distil into a time-constrained film. Instead, the Saltburn director has suggested that her “primal and sexual” adaptation, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, will be told through the lens of her first time reading the book when she was 14 years old. Writing a foreword for a special edition of the novel, revealed on Friday by The Hollywood Reporter, Fennell said: “It is too slippery, too wild, too good to distill into two hours of film.” (India McTaggart)
The latest trailer for Emerald Fennell’s take on Wuthering Heights was … well, it was something. The movie has the title in quotation marks, so it’s really “Wuthering Heights” this time. But why, punctuation pedants (implicating myself here), wanted to know? Well, we may have a small hint. Along with writing and directing the film, Fennell has “curated” a new edition of the novel for Simon & Schuster’s Female Filmmakers Collection. It is less than clear what this means, other than picking a slightly perplexing cover image (most of the Reactor staff initially thought the image, below, was more gynecological than equine-related) and writing a foreword. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “each volume will be curated by a different director, tasked with curating a movie-inspired cover, writing a new foreword, and imbuing the paperback with cinematic references and Easter eggs.” In her foreword, Fennell writes of the novel, “It is too slippery, too wild, too good to distill into two hours of film. Instead what I have attempted to do is adapt my own experience of reading it for the first time. It is an adaptation of a feeling: my first disemboweling by the baby god.” My first disemboweling by the baby god. Just sit with that for a minute. If Fennell is not actually doing a straight adaptation of Emily Brontë’s book—a theory that was already floating around out there—then it helps make sense of a few of the things in the trailer, including the quotation marks and the age of at least one of the stars. The text along with the trailer does note that the film is “inspired by the greatest love story of all time,” and “inspired by” is not the same as “based on,” though either way I take issue with the rest of that sentence. “Wuthering Heights,” which stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, is in theaters February 14, 2026. The not-a-tie-in edition of the novel arrives on shelves a bit earlier, on February 3. Surely fans will be scouring its references for hints as to what Fennell is doing. (Molly Templeton)
Well, we knew all along that it was going to be her vision, as it should be with all adaptations. If you want all the commas and dashes, you should stick to reading the actual book. Whether you end up liking it or not, what makes an adaptation interesting is the fact that it's someone else's take on the novel.
I rarely write about movie posters, unless they’re either god awful or gloriously great that attention must be paid to them. The one just released for Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” sort of falls into the latter category. At this point, it’ll be worth seeing Fennell’s film just for the posters alone. Of course, you also have the trailers, and it seems like with each new trailer, the conversation around this film keeps growing, both positively and negatively, people are split on it, and nobody’s seen it. Yet, the posters aren’t talked about enough. The latest poster — below— fully embraces the kind of art you’d see in a bodice ripper, a sleazy erotic romance novel — Wycaro by Carol Sturka, for you “Pluribus” fans? — and apparently, according to some of the test reactions, the film will play exactly like those novels. Is it any coincidence that Fennell has pointedly mentioned that the title isn’t Wuthering Heights, but rather it’s “Wuthering Heights”, emphasis on the quotations. It’ll be nothing like the Emily Brontë novel, purists be damned. It’s a Valentine’s Day release for the most toxic relationship in literature. This is not faithful, whatsoever, to the Wuthering Heights we’ve come to know, and maybe that’s a good thing — who seriously wanted the umpteenth straight retelling of this story? Absolutely nobody. Fennell got the memo. I’m actually reminded of when Sofia Coppola turned “Marie Antoinette” into a pop cultural artifact and infused her film with rock and roll songs. Fennell has taken that cue here — her film is filmed with 35mm VistaVision cameras and the soundtrack is by Charli xcx. Fennell, known for “Saltburn” and “Promising Young Woman”, has said Brontë’s gothic classic “cracked me open” when she read it at 14. “I’ve been obsessed. I’ve been driven mad by this book,” Fennell said. “I know that if somebody else made it, I’d be furious. It’s very personal material for everyone. It’s very illicit. The way we relate to the characters is very private.” In a way, purely based on the limited interviews Fennell has given about this film, it seems as though the film version Fennell has concocted out of Brontë’s novel is the one she imagined in her head as a 14-year-old girl, which means it’s unfiltered, adolescent, heightened, and no “proper” literary adaptation. It’s the version born from a teenager’s feverish encounter with a book that felt dangerous and seductive and strange. (Jordan Ruimy)
Daily Mail discusses period drama faces vs iPhone faces. It follows the rise of 'iPhone face' with the success of Netflix's House of Guinness, set in 1860s Dublin, and the highly anticipated new Wuthering Heights adaptation, which takes place in 19th-century Yorkshire. [...] It's an accusation that has also plagued the upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation directed by Saltburn's Emerald Fennell. Fans of the book have blasted the 'weird' and 'terrible' casting of Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff - and claiming that the director has 'not read' the Emily Brontë novel. (Eleanor Dye)
Her Campus has an article on 'Why were [sic] hating the new wuthering height [sic] adaptation'.
The Wall Street Journal has a list of biographies they recommend as holiday gifts, and one of them is Graham Watson’s The Invention of Charlotte Brontë. Elizabeth Gaskell called the biography she wrote about her friend Charlotte Brontë—which helped cement the novelist’s literary fame—an “unlucky book.” Upon its publication in 1857, two years after the death of the author of “Jane Eyre,” Gaskell received angry letters, threats of libel lawsuits and outraged responses from Brontë’s father and her widower. Graham Watson’s “The Invention of Charlotte Brontë” (Pegasus, 288 pages, $29.95) explains how Gaskell came to depict her friend as a saintly yet tragic figure, an exaggerated portrayal that has remained stubbornly persistent. In her review, Kathryn Hughes called the book “a gripping testimony into the enduring problems that all biographers face in pursuit of their art.” (Barbara Spindel)
The book I came back to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I gave it up three times after finding it too hard-going – now it’s one of my all-time top five novels.
Haworth is one of the '9 Most Charming Small Towns in England' according to World Atlas. Haworth Haworth is known for both its beauty and fame. Its fame arises from its connection to the Brontë sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. The town's natural beauty is enhanced by the nearby Yorkshire Moors. The areas close to the town offer perfect settings for exploring and enjoying relaxing walks. The Brontë sisters' historic home, which is also the birthplace of many of their novels, operates as the Brontë Parsonage Museum. It is a popular destination for literature fans. For anyone who admires their work, this site is a must-visit. The main street of the village is well-known for its steep slopes, cobblestone charm, and historic public houses. This street has retained much of its 19th-century character, providing a glimpse into the era of the Brontës. Take a ride back in time on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, a functional heritage steam train. It runs near Haworth and through the heart of the English countryside, offering a scenic journey.
Angelus News has an article on 'The Christian values at the heart of Jane Eyre'. An alert from the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton:
23/11/2025 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Join us for our Walking Tour of historic Thornton, uncovering the rich cultural, industrial, and architectural heritage of the Brontë children’s birthplace. For many years, Thornton has been the forgotten chapter in the Brontë story but since the grand opening of the Brontë Birthplace, we’re working to shine a light on the fascinating history of this charming and characterful village.
This is our final walking tou
r of 2025 – to return in Spring 2026!
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