The moors have never looked so dangerously seductive. Emerald Fennell, the audacious mind behind Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, has unleashed the first trailer for her adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and it’s a fever dream of obsession, fury, and rain-soaked passion that will leave audiences gasping. Starring Margot Robbie as the untamed Catherine Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as the brooding Heathcliff, this is no dusty period drama—it’s a visceral, pulse-pounding romance that dares to ask: how far would you go for a love that destroys everything in its path?
From the opening frame, Fennell plunges us into the storm-lashed Yorkshire landscape, where wind howls like a wounded animal and the sky splits open with thunder. Robbie’s Catherine appears first, her blonde hair whipping across her face as she races barefoot across the heather, her white nightgown clinging to her body like a second skin. “I am Heathcliff!” she screams into the void, her voice raw and unhinged. Then Elordi’s Heathcliff emerges from the shadows, his dark eyes burning with a rage that feels almost supernatural. The camera lingers on his scarred knuckles, his soaked shirt plastered to his chest, as he grabs Catherine by the waist and pulls her into a kiss that’s equal parts violence and worship. Rain pours down in sheets, blurring the line between tears and desire.
This is the moment the internet has been waiting for. The trailer’s centerpiece—a three-minute sequence of the lovers’ explosive reunion after years apart—has already racked up millions of views in less than 24 hours. “It’s like Titanic meets Fight Club in a gothic fever dream,” one X user posted, alongside a slowed-down clip of Elordi slamming Robbie against a crumbling stone wall, their mouths crashing together as lightning illuminates their faces. Another fan wrote, “Margot Robbie just reinvented the period drama kiss. I need oxygen.”
But Fennell isn’t content to merely update Brontë’s classic for the TikTok generation. She’s weaponized it. The trailer teases a radical reimagining of the novel’s themes, amplifying the class warfare, racial undercurrents, and sexual obsession that simmer beneath the original text. Heathcliff, played by Elordi with a feral intensity that recalls his unhinged Felix in Saltburn, is no longer just a “dark-skinned gypsy” stereotype—he’s a man weaponized by society’s cruelty, his revenge a slow-burning inferno. Robbie’s Catherine, meanwhile, is a force of nature, her privilege and madness intertwined. “She’s not a heroine,” Fennell told reporters at a secretive press screening. “She’s a catastrophe in human form.”
The supporting cast is a murderer’s row of talent. Tom Hollander drips venom as the sanctimonious Joseph, while Florence Pugh brings a haunted fragility to Isabella Linton, her wide eyes betraying a woman trapped in a nightmare of her own making. Newcomer Mia Goth appears in flashes as a ghostly figure—possibly the spirit of Catherine herself—whispering lines like, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same… and we will burn for it.” The trailer’s sound design is a character in itself: a low, guttural score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross pulses beneath the dialogue, punctuated by the crack of whips, the shatter of glass, and the wet slap of flesh on flesh.
What’s truly shocking, though, is how explicitly Fennell leans into the novel’s erotic undercurrents. This is not your grandmother’s Wuthering Heights. The trailer includes a scene of Catherine and Heathcliff tangled in a hayloft, their bodies moving with a desperation that borders on the animalistic. “I cannot live without my life! I cannot die without my soul!” Catherine gasps, her nails raking down Heathcliff’s back as hay clings to their sweat-slicked skin. It’s a moment that feels less like a literary adaptation and more like a forbidden fantasy ripped from the pages of Anaïs Nin.
Fennell’s visual language is relentless. She shoots the moors like a lover’s body—every hill a curve, every storm a climax. The color palette swings wildly between bruised purples and arterial reds, with Robbie and Elordi’s chemistry providing the only warmth in a world gone cold. One particularly haunting shot shows Catherine standing at the edge of a cliff, her dress billowing like a sail as Heathcliff reaches for her from below, his voice breaking: “Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad!” The camera spins 360 degrees, disorienting the viewer, until we’re not sure if we’re watching a love story or a descent into hell.
The trailer also hints at the story’s tragic second half, with glimpses of a grown-up Hareton (played by Barry Keoghan in a wild, unkempt transformation) and a spectral Cathy Linton (Anya Taylor-Joy, all sharp cheekbones and ghostly pallor). But it’s clear Fennell’s focus is on the central couple’s toxic symbiosis. “This isn’t about redemption,” the director has said. “It’s about what happens when love becomes a natural disaster.”
Social media is already ablaze. #WutheringHeights is trending worldwide, with fans dissecting every frame. One viral thread points out that Elordi’s Heathcliff wears a single gold earring—a detail not in the novel but a nod to his outsider status. Another user created a side-by-side comparison of Robbie’s rain-soaked kiss with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s iconic Titanic moment, declaring, “Margot just ended the 90s.” Meanwhile, book purists are clutching their pearls, decrying the trailer’s “pornographic” intensity. “This isn’t Brontë,” one wrote. “This is Fennell’s fever dream.” To which a fan replied: “Good. The moors deserve to be filthy.”
The film’s release date—Valentine’s Day 2026—feels like a cruel joke. Who thought it was a good idea to drop a story this unhinged on the most romantic day of the year? But that’s Fennell’s genius. She’s taking a 19th-century tale of doomed love and turning it into a cultural Molotov cocktail. Early buzz suggests Wuthering Heights could be the Oscar frontrunner, with Robbie and Elordi already generating Best Actress and Best Actor chatter. “They don’t just play Catherine and Heathcliff,” one critic wrote after a test screening. “They are them. It’s terrifying.”
As the trailer fades to black, one final image lingers: Robbie and Elordi standing atop Penistone Crags, their silhouettes merging into one as the storm rages around them. “Haunt me, then,” Heathcliff whispers, his lips brushing her ear. The screen cuts to the title card, scorched and bleeding, as a single line of text appears: Some loves never die. They just destroy everything.
If this trailer is any indication, Emerald Fennell has created something monstrously alive. Wuthering Heights isn’t just a movie—it’s a possession. And come February, we’ll all be begging to be haunted.
