Storms on the Moors: Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi Ignite a Feverish Wuthering Heights

A wind-lashed cliff. A woman in silk and thorns. A man promising to follow “like a dog.” The first trailer for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights doesn’t just tease another period adaptation; it announces a sensual, ferocious reimagining determined to make Emily Brontë’s classic feel dangerous again. With Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, the film plants its flag squarely in the territory of obsession—less bonnet drama, more gothic hurricane.

A Valentine’s release with thorny intentions

Warner Bros. is positioning the movie for maximum impact: a theatrical launch on February 13, 2026—Valentine’s Day weekend. It’s a sly move for a story that famously skewers fairytale romance. Expect marketing to lean into the contradiction: a beautiful packaging for a love that’s anything but gentle. Strategically, the date taps both date-night audiences and awards-season chatter still simmering from late winter festivals.

Fennell’s signature: beauty with bite

From Promising Young Woman to Saltburn, Fennell has specialized in stories that seduce before they devour. The trailer suggests the same grammar here: saturated color, tactile costuming, and images that feel both classic and slightly feverish. Early footage foregrounds bodies and landscape as co-conspirators—heaving heather, rippling gowns, skin in close-up—telegraphing that passion is the engine and nature is its echo chamber. It’s Brontë through a modern lens: heritage cinema that refuses to behave.

The sound of obsession: Charli XCX and an original score

Two musical currents seem to collide—an original score reportedly by Anthony Willis and new music from Charli XCX. That pairing hints at the film’s tonal ambition: a classical emotional spine with disruptive, contemporary edges. Charli’s glossy, hyper-romantic pop may work as the “now” counterpoint to Willis’s more traditional thematic writing, reinforcing the adaptation’s thesis that Cathy and Heathcliff’s hunger is timeless, not antique.

Casting heat: Robbie & Elordi as combustible leads

Robbie’s Catherine looks less ethereal waif than bottled lightning—vain, vibrant, aching to choose herself even when it annihilates her. Elordi’s Heathcliff, meanwhile, leans into wounded grandeur: a towering presence with animal devotion lurking under the gentleman’s coat. The trailer offers fleeting but telling line reads (“I will follow you like a dog”), promising a dynamic that is more predatory than polite, more ritual than romance. If these performances land, they’ll recenter the text’s cruelty and cost, not sand them down for comfort.

The screen behind the screen: LuckyChap, Sandgren & the moor as a character

Robbie not only stars but produces via LuckyChap, a signal that the film will be authored in front of and behind the camera. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren—known for turning landscapes into psychology—brings the moors alive as an organism that breathes with the leads. Shots of horizon lines tilting and wind shredding fabric suggest a visual metaphor: this isn’t “background”; it’s pressure. The moor becomes the third lover in the triangle of Cathy–Heathcliff–society.

The discourse: fidelity vs. interpretation (again)

No modern classic arrives without a fight over “faithfulness.” Debate has already flared around casting—particularly the longtime scholarly reading of Heathcliff as a racialized outsider—and around the film’s provocative marketing choices (even the quoted title treatment has stirred think pieces). Fennell’s camp appears unbothered, arguing for artistic interpretation over forensic replication. The smarter way to read the movie, then, is not as a costume-accurate museum piece but as a thesis on desire’s violence—what it does to lovers, families, and class structures when unleashed.

How the trailer re-frames the novel’s spine

Three choices stand out:

Devotion as menace. Heathcliff’s vow to follow doesn’t play romantic; it plays possessive. That’s closer to Brontë’s text than many remember—this is a story where love curdles into punishment.
Catherine’s agency. Rather than treating Cathy as a windblown victim of circumstance, the footage hints at a woman complicit in her own ruin—seduced by class performance even as it suffocates her. This modernizes her without absolving her.
The moor as myth. The imagery positions the outdoors as church and battlefield, echoing the novel’s most primal passages. If sustained, that aesthetic could make the film feel closer to a gothic operetta than to traditional literary drama.

Where this can go wrong—and why it might not

Potential pitfalls are obvious: an overly modern sheen that flattens 19th-century social brutality; aesthetic bravura without emotional marrow; controversy overshadowing craft. Yet Fennell’s recent work shows a knack for threading provocation with disciplined structure. Pair that with Warner Bros.’ wide release muscle and a buzzy soundtrack, and you have the ingredients for a mainstream gothic that still bites.

What to watch as marketing ramps up

Second trailer shape. Does the next look reveal the Lintons, Hindley’s cruelty, or the second-generation plotline (Young Cathy/Hareton)? With a sprawling book, selection is storytelling.

Music drops. If Charli XCX previews an original single tied to a set piece, expect the film to court younger audiences beyond lit-class nostalgia.

Visual identity. Posters and featurettes should keep blending couture with grit. Look for color stories (blood reds, storm blues) and tactile motifs (mud, metal, lace) that telegraph themes at a glance.

Conversation management. If the team leans into Q&As about interpretation rather than “accuracy,” it can reframe discourse from scolding to curiosity—always healthier for box office.

Why a new Wuthering Heights matters now

Every era remakes Wuthering Heights to answer its own question about love and power. In 2026, that question may be: What happens when desire refuses to be domesticated? In a culture that tries to package everything—including romance—Fennell’s version looks ready to argue that some loves are tectonic plates: mesmerizing to watch, catastrophic to live. That’s not a bug of Brontë’s novel; it’s the feature that made it immortal.

The first trailer promises a Wuthering Heights that’s lush, lusty, and unafraid to court outrage. With Robbie and Elordi giving star power to a story that thrives on storm clouds and moral erosion, and with Fennell’s taste for operatic unease, this could be the rare literary adaptation that dominates both discourse and date night. Circle February 13, 2026—and bring someone who likes their romance with thunder.

EO keywords: Wuthering Heights trailer, Margot Robbie Catherine Earnshaw, Jacob Elordi Heathcliff, Emerald Fennell movie, Valentine’s Day 2026 release, gothic romance film, Charli XCX soundtrack, LuckyChap, Warner Bros., Linus Sandgren cinematography.