Wuthering Heights 2026 director wants film to be "this generation’s Titanic" – as Margot Robbie responds to casting backlash

Emerald Fennell has said she hopes her adaptation of Wuthering Heights resonates with audiences as strongly as James Cameron's monumental romance film Titanic.

The upcoming movie, which is a take on Emily Brontë's 1847 novel of the same name, follows the passion-fuelled and tumultuous relationship between Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi), an orphan adopted by her landowning family.

Following the release of the trailer, which paired Anthony Willis's classical score with music by Charli xcx and showed Margot Robbie’s Catherine in a 1980s-style wedding dress, many fans were quick to criticise the film’s seemingly erotic, modern tone.

Responding to this criticism in a new interview about the film with British Vogue, Robbie said: "I think people will be surprised. Not to say there aren’t sexual elements and that it’s not provocative — it definitely is provocative — but it’s more romantic than provocative.

"This is a big epic romance. It’s just been so long since we’ve had one — maybe The Notebook, also The English Patient. You have to go back decades."

Speaking about how she discussed the film’s intimate scenes with Fennell, she added: “What reads to us as hot or exciting or sexy?’ And it’s not just a sex position or someone taking their shirt off.

"It was the little things that we loved as two women in our 30s, and this movie is primarily for people in our demographic. These epic romances and period pieces aren’t often made by women.”

Talking about the film’s tone, Robbie said that Fennell had Titanic in mind. "In one of our first conversations about this film, I asked Emerald what her dream outcome was. She said, ‘I want this to be this generation’s Titanic. I went to the cinema to watch Romeo & Juliet eight times and I was on the ground crying when I wasn’t allowed to go back for a ninth. I want it to be that.’”

She added that their hope is that women “go see it with 10 of their female friends” and that “it’s going to be an amazing date movie".

Titanic, of course, stars Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack and Kate Winslet’s Rose and has parallels to Wuthering Heights in that it follows two people from different social classes embarking upon a romance.

The anachronistic elements in Fennell's adaptation haven’t been the only things sparking backlash, with many fans also criticising the film for aging up the characters, who are teenagers for much of the novel’s plot (Elordi is 28 and Robbie is 35), as well as for erasing Heathcliff’s non-white background.

Speaking about Robbie, Fennell told the publication: “It’s difficult to find that supersized star power,” she said. “Margot comes with big dick energy. That’s what Cathy needs.”

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Meanwhile, responding to backlash specifically over the new Cathy being blonde rather than brunette, as she is in the novel, Robbie said: “I get it” because “there’s nothing else to go off at this point until people see the movie”.

Talking about Elordi's casting, she added: “I saw him play Heathcliff. And he is Heathcliff. I’d say, just wait. Trust me, you’ll be happy.

"It’s a character that has this lineage of other great actors who’ve played him, from Laurence Olivier to Richard Burton and Ralph Fiennes to Tom Hardy. To be a part of that is special. He’s incredible and I believe in him so much.

"I honestly think he’s our generation’s Daniel Day-Lewis.”

Wuthering Heights will be released in cinemas on 13th February 2026.

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