Love Is a Many Splendored Thing: Wuthering Heights 3.0 Takes It to the Limit One More Time
Alexandria, VA – Withering – I mean Wuthering Heights – reinvented one more time, drops this month, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Wuthering Heights chosen for a romantic movie date night or the lonely hearts club is not necessarily a smart plan. It’s rather like taking your current flame as a date to a wedding – a sure-fire way to send them running for the moors. Still the lure of the love forlorn has been a tried-and-true cinema staple for over a century.
The 1939 original adaptation of Emily Brontë’s greatest and only 1847 novel, one of the classic must-reads of English literature, set a high bar. The black and white masterpiece starred a young, devastatingly handsome Sir Lawrence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Catherine Earnshaw, with a young, almost unrecognizable David Niven as Edgar Linton.
Directed by William Wyler, the film earned ten Oscar nominations. Up against The Wizard of Oz it won only one, ironically for Best Cinematography. Olivier’s convincing deep, dark, broodingly disturbed portrayal of Heathcliff, whose obsession with his childhood sweetheart Catherine transcended time (and her marriage to the cuckolded Edgar Linton), evoked profound pity and compassion.
Ralph Fiennes’s 1992 interpretation of the role proved to be shockingly pathological. Fiennes’s Heathcliff was psychotic: brutal, sado-masochistic, manipulative. Humiliation and torture were his turn-ons. Opposed to Juliette Binoche’s feisty Catherine this torrid, anguished love-hate affair was a riveting maelstrom of love’s labors irrevocably lost. They are nonetheless unequivocally brilliant in a tempestuous Tarantella pas d’amour.
Fast forward to this month. Emerald Fennell wrote and directed Wuthering Heights 2026, reuniting Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi who both starred in Saltburn. This is Fennell’s second film. Saltburn was her first with Robbie producing both films under her Lucky Chao Entertainment label.
Fennell is an actor’s director/writer. Her acting chops are well-documented in a mile-long laundry list of television, film, and theater credits. You may recognize her as Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown. But in 2021 Fennell took home the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for scripting Promising Young Woman.
Casting Robbie was a done deal – literally. Elordi in the role of Heathcliff was prophetic.
Currently seen as the creature in Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, Elordi eloquently portrays a more plaintive monster than Heathcliff. Elordi crafts a compelling, victimized persona that is bound to earn him the Oscar for Best Supporting Male Actor. As such, he may just prove to be the greatest Heathcliff yet.
Wuthering Heights hype is hitting the incurably romantic zeitgeist big-time already. Costumed screenings are being held with souvenir props and themed nosh and cocktails dropping on theater cafe menus.
Bloomingdale’s flagship Manhattan store has even opened up a Carousel Wuthering Heights immersive experience boutique, blending a celebration of the film’s storied romance with Valentine’s Day.
Is the 2026 remake a must-see? As with any reboot the question inevitably becomes “why revisit the story at all?” If you’re a fan of Brontë’s one-and-done masterpiece you’ve got to be curious. If you enjoy watching pretty people like Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi… and who doesn’t? Well… why not?
