A steamy first look at a thorny classic
Warner Bros. has unveiled the first teaser for Emerald Fennell’s take on Wuthering Heights, and it wastes no time setting a tone: fog, thunder, quick flashes of skin, and a single line that sums up the mood—“Drive me mad.” Dropping on September 3, 2025, the clip introduces a feverish, high-contrast vision of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi fronting the central, ruinous love story.
Fennell—an Oscar and BAFTA winner for Promising Young Woman and the filmmaker behind Saltburn—both writes and directs, bringing her taste for desire, cruelty, and power games to the Yorkshire moors. The supporting cast is stacked: Oscar nominee Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, BAFTA winner Martin Clunes, and Ewan Mitchell all appear in tense, blink-and-miss shots that hint at class conflict and family fractures.
The teaser doesn’t map out the plot. It doesn’t need to. Rapid cuts show rain-lashed windows, muddy gowns, a hand at a throat, and a breathless embrace that’s already fueling the “controversial” chatter online. Brontë’s story was never gentle—obsession, jealousy, revenge, and generational damage are the spine of this book—and Fennell seems intent on stripping away the polite romance version many remember from school.
Importantly, the marketing is clear about scope and timing. This is a Warner Bros. Pictures and MRC title, presented as a Lie Still & LuckyChap Entertainment Production. The studio is slotting it for February 13, 2026 in the U.S., with select international rollouts starting February 11. Valentine’s Day weekend is deliberate: studios often plant high-heat romances or date-night dramas there. Given the source material, this one is more poison rose than heart-shaped chocolate.
Robbie and Elordi, both BAFTA nominees with sharp recent runs, anchor the film’s push. Robbie adds another literary adaptation to a career that’s mixed star turns with hands-on producing. Elordi, coming off acclaimed roles that wrestle with charisma and menace, gets a marquee showcase built around intensity rather than quips or spectacle. The teaser keeps the character names unspoken, but the vibe is unmistakable: two people who can’t stay apart and can’t survive together.
Visually, the piece leans Gothic without going dusty. The color palette tilts cold—slate skies, sickly candlelight—then punches in with feverish warmth during the intimate beats. Costumes are more tactile than pristine; you feel the damp. The camera lingers on small violence: dirty fingernails, bruised knuckles, a ripped ribbon. That attention to texture lines up with Fennell’s past work, where desire and danger live in the details.
The ensemble casting suggests a broader canvas than a two-hander. Hong Chau’s knack for cool control hints at the novel’s social gatekeeping. Alison Oliver, who broke out in Conversations with Friends and resurfaced in Saltburn, brings a brittle edge that suits Brontë’s world of score-settling. Martin Clunes adds flint to the older generation, while Ewan Mitchell, a standout in House of the Dragon, is well-matched to a story where youth curdles fast.
Production-wise, the package has muscle. It’s produced by Josey McNamara, Emerald Fennell, and Margot Robbie, with Sara Desmond and Tom Ackerley as executive producers. LuckyChap Entertainment—co-founded by Robbie and Ackerley—has made a habit of pairing commercial instincts with provocative material. Teaming with MRC and Warner Bros. gives this a broad runway and a marketing machine capable of turning literary heritage into multiplex momentum.
For readers who know the book, the big question is fidelity. Past screen versions have split between windswept romance and brutal tragedy: William Wyler’s 1939 film with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier became the marquee love-story template; Peter Kosminsky’s 1992 version with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes leaned mood and melancholy; Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation went dirt-under-the-nails naturalist. The teaser for this new film signals something else—less misty nostalgia, more corrosive longing.
That approach fits Fennell. Promising Young Woman turned revenge into a candy-colored trap. Saltburn dressed class envy in silk and shadows. Both were lightning rods—acclaimed, argued over, widely watched. Bringing that temperament to Brontë’s novel is logical, if risky. Plenty of people still misremember Wuthering Heights as a soft-focus romance. The book is harsher than that. It’s about people who do damage and call it love.
Marketing-wise, the early drop makes sense. A fall 2025 teaser for a February 2026 release sets a long fuse: one teaser to spark chatter, a full trailer around the holidays if the studio wants date-night awareness in place by January, and then targeted character spots. The tone of this first clip—suggestive, not explicit—lets Warner Bros. feel out audience appetite for how far the film’s sensuality can go. There’s no rating yet.
What’s new here is not just heat; it’s scale. The landscapes look big, the interiors cramped, and the bodies close. The contrast underlines a central tension of the book: the moors promise freedom, but the characters keep dragging their cages with them. Romantic release and social punishment arrive as a pair. When the teaser whispers “Drive me mad,” it reads as invitation and sentence.
If you’re tracking the business side, Valentine’s frames matter. The frame has boosted everything from swoony dramas to darker fare with a relationship hook. A Brontë adaptation with movie stars, a proven provocateur behind the camera, and a studio marketing plan points to a bid for both box office and awards conversation—especially if the craft elements (costume, production design, cinematography) land.
Key details confirmed so far:
- Title: Wuthering Heights
- Writer-director: Emerald Fennell
- Lead cast: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi
- Supporting cast: Hong Chau, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Clunes, Ewan Mitchell
- Producers: Josey McNamara, Emerald Fennell, Margot Robbie
- Executive producers: Sara Desmond, Tom Ackerley
- Companies: Lie Still & LuckyChap Entertainment; in association with MRC
- Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures (worldwide)
- Release: February 11, 2026 (select international); February 13, 2026 (U.S.)
Everything else—rating, runtime, full soundtrack, festival plans—remains under wraps. Expect more footage as awards season trailers start to crowd feeds later this year. For now, the teaser’s message is simple: this Wuthering Heights will sweat, shiver, and hurt. If you want gentle, pick another moor.
Why the moors still grip us
Part of the reason this story keeps getting remade is that it refuses to resolve cleanly. Love doesn’t redeem; it corrodes. Class doesn’t soften; it hardens. Family is the wound and the bandage—and the bandage never sticks. That messy mix maps well onto modern audiences who are comfortable with protagonists who aren’t role models.
There’s also the way Brontë built weather into psychology. The landscape acts like a character, which is perfect for cinema. Shots of wind flattening grass, mud climbing up a hem, a house rattling as if it resents its occupants—these are simple images with big emotional range. The teaser leans on that grammar. The physical world keeps pushing the lovers toward extremes.
For Emerald Fennell, this is a chance to braid her interests—desire, status, punishment—into a story audiences already know. For Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, it’s an opportunity to play attraction as a trap rather than a reward. And for Warner Bros., it’s a test: can a ferocious literary classic, told with bite and sex and a knowingly modern camera, own a weekend built for roses and prix fixe menus?
We’ll learn more with the full trailer. For now, the signal is clear: this adaptation is not here to sanitize the canon. It’s here to make it sting.